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Better income assistance programs are needed to help people with rising cost of living

Saturday, 22 October 2022 03:42 Written by

Canada’s current social assistance programs are not doing enough to support Canadians. (Shutterstock)

Wayne Simpson, University of Manitoba

At the onset of the pandemic, the Canadian federal government cobbled together a series of programs to help vulnerable populations who needed support. These measures included boosts to Canada Child Benefit payments, the goods and services (GST) tax credit and the Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors.

This choice of programs is telling in two important respects. First, they all came in the form of income-tested monthly benefits paid through the tax system. Secondly, the programs were mostly directed at families with children and seniors, with the exception of the GST credit that provides tax-free payments to individuals and families across Canada at or below the poverty line.

The addition of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit for workers who lost significant income during the pandemic, along with liberalized eligibility rules for Employment Insurance, were necessary but still left large gaps in protection for others who were economically vulnerable, notably singles and couples without children.

The provincial governments, who are in charge of social and welfare assistance in Canada, largely left pandemic income support to the federal government. More recently, the provinces have been active in attempting to cushion the impact of rising energy prices and inflation, as federal assistance measures expire.

Diversity of assistance programs

Alberta, Newfoundland and Ontario have introduced temporary reductions in gas taxes, which are directed at families in general rather than those with lower incomes. Québec introduced a non-taxable $500 benefit to taxpayers with incomes under $100,000 in 2021, with reduced payments for incomes up to $150,000.

People walk in front of a Shell gas station sign displaying a gas price of 227.9
Reductions in gas taxes in Alberta, Newfoundland and Ontario are aimed at families that own cars, rather than those with lower incomes. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

In 2021, Manitoba provided families with household incomes under $175,000 a $250 benefit for their first child and $200 for each additional child. They also provided $300 benefits for senior households with incomes under $40,000 who claimed the education property tax credit in 2021, or received provincial Employment and Income Assistance.

British Columbia is quadrupling the fourth quarter federal Climate Action Tax Credit, which is based on net income and family size. There is clearly a vast diversity of social assistance programs at both the federal and provincial levels — but are they enough to help those in need?

Building assistance programs

Underlying these government programs is a historic framework that comes down to three principles: benefit coverage, government generosity, and tapering or reducing the benefits based on income.

In Canada, most social assistance programs are limited or conditional, meaning recipients must meet certain criteria to receive support. Programs tend to be geared toward seniors, families with children and working age adults with imposed employment conditions. While universal coverage has been around since 1962, it has never gone beyond the experimental stage in North America.

The distribution of income assistance often comes down to the question of who in need of help will actually receive support. In other words, these programs depend on generosity: Who is and is not deserving of coverage? This generosity depends both on the fiscal capacity of governments and their willingness to devote resources to the assistance of those in need.

A middle age caregiver sitting and reading on a bench beside an elderly woman, presumably her client. The caregiver's face is in focus. The elderly woman is slightly blurred.
Most social assistance programs in Canada are oriented toward elderly people and families with children. (Shutterstock)

It’s clear that current federal and provincial income support falls short of Canada’s official poverty line, now enshrined under the Poverty Reduction Act. This is especially significant for non-elderly adults without children who do not receive federal child or seniors benefits.

The effectiveness of social programs also depends on how they are tapered. Tapering refers to the way benefits are distributed to program recipients. Tapering on the basis of family income has been a hallmark of Canadian income supports since the early proposals for a guaranteed basic income, with lower income families receiving larger amounts of benefits for a given financial outlay.

Tapering characterizes the main federal income support programs and was explicit in the reasoning behind the current Canada Child Benefit that replaced the Universal Child Care Benefit. However, the benefit is not tapered enough — it guarantees families with incomes up to $200,000 receive benefits. This limited tapering means those with the greatest need get less than they might otherwise.

Better support for Canadians

It’s clear that Canada’s current income assistance programs are not doing enough to support Canadians. Canadians are increasingly turning to crowdfunding sites for support to keep them afloat during personal and family crises.

If the goal of temporary assistance is to help those in need, it must have broader coverage and better tapering. The only program that qualifies at present is the GST credit, but even these payments are modest and only delivered quarterly.

The federal government has just decided to double the GST credit for six months to deliver additional relief to these low-income families, but a family of four will only receive a maximum of an additional $467 a year from this measure.

A more generous income assistance program should also have more frequent regular payments. Expanding the GST credit might be more helpful, but other ways to supplement or replace provincial social assistance programs, such as a guaranteed basic income for working-age Canadians, might provide better support for those in need.The Conversation

Wayne Simpson, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Manitoba

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Georgia College Student Killed 'Instantly' by Plane Propeller During Extravagant Dinner Date

Saturday, 22 October 2022 02:50 Written by

A man who died as the result of an accident on the ground Sunday night at the Statesboro-Bulloch County Airport has been identified by the coroner as Sani Aliyu, a Georgia Southern University student who had an Atlanta home address and was originally from Nigeria.

A small plane in which Aliyu, 21, was a passenger landed safely, but he was reportedly struck by the propeller after getting out of the plane. Bulloch County 911 dispatched emergency services to the airport shortly before 10:45 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16.  Bulloch Coroner Jake Futch, who pronounced Aliyu dead at the scene, released his identity Monday afternoon.

Aliyu had been one of four occupants of the 2005 Cessna 172S when it landed without incident around 10:35 p.m., according to a preliminary statement from Steve Kulm, public affairs specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration.

The other people on board were the pilot, a co-pilot and another passenger who was a friend of Aliyu’s, according to Capt. Todd Hutchens of the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office. Futch referred to the friend as a young woman with whom Aliyu had been on a date, and he and Hutchens said Aliyu apparently also knew the pilot and co-pilot, but authorities were not naming any of the others as of Monday.

“They flew to Savannah to go on a date, flew back, landed at the Statesboro Airport, and the young lady got off the plane and walked toward the back of the plane, and he got off the airplane and walked toward the front of the plane, and when he did, the propeller hit him,” Futch said.

The Bulloch County Emergency Medical Service responded with an ambulance, but Aliyu had been struck twice in the head by the propellor and died immediately, the coroner said.

 

University statement

Futch said he saw information indicating that Aliyu was originally from Nigeria.

Communications Manager Melanie Simón in Georgia Southern University’s communications and marketing office confirmed that Aliyu was a current student — a sophomore majoring in management — from Atlanta but had no information on his birthplace or national origin. Simón provided a statement from Dr. Aileen C. Dowell, the university’s dean of students and associate vice president.

“We were deeply saddened to hear about the tragic incident that involved one of our students Sunday night,” Dowell said. “I have already been in touch with his family and professors, and we have mobilized all available resources to provide counseling and any other assistance the university can give.”

Hutchens confirmed that the Sheriff’s Office had responded Sunday night and collected information but said that details would be turned over the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Nobody is really at fault or anything, it was an accident, so we just have to communicate all of our information with them,” Hutchens said.

The accident occurred with the plane stationary on the ground, near where planes are parked, he noted.

 

FAA and NTSB

Kulm, the FAA spokesperson, in an email reply referred to the accident as having occurred “after the plane taxied onto the ramp area.”

“The FAA and NTSB will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and will provide all updates,” Kulm wrote.

He stated that neither agency identifies people involved in aircraft accidents. But he provided the aircraft’s registration number. The FAA registry database identifies American Aviation Inc., a dealership and aircraft services company in Brooksville, Florida, as registered owner of the four-seat, single-engine Cessna 172S.

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Life Expectancy Recovers in Western Europe, And Continues to Drop in The US

Friday, 21 October 2022 02:23 Written by
A family of four looks out at the sunrise.(Kohei Hara/DigitalVision/Getty Images)

The COVID pandemic triggered an unprecedented rise in deaths around the world, leading to falls in life expectancy. In research last year, we found that 2020 saw significant life expectancy losses, including more than two years in the US and one year in England and Wales.

In a new study published in Nature Human Behavior, we have now shown that, in 2021, life expectancy rebounded somewhat in most western European countries while eastern Europe and the US witnessed additional losses. However, only Norway beat its pre-pandemic life expectancy in 2021, and everywhere is worse off than it would likely have been without the pandemic.

We knew the outlook for 2021 was mixed, with the excitement of vaccine rollouts tempered by huge numbers of infections caused by a series of new and highly transmissible variants.

To assess the impact of these changes on life expectancy, our research team at the University of Oxford's Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research gathered data from 29 mostly European countries (plus Chile and the US).

Life expectancy is a measure we use to summarise the mortality pattern of a country in a given year. It's calculated based on deaths from all causes, so it doesn't depend on the accuracy of recording COVID deaths, and can give us a broader picture of how the pandemic affected mortality.

Life expectancy is not a prediction of the lifespan of a baby born today. Rather, it's the number of years someone born today could expect to live, if they lived their whole life with the mortality rates of the current year (or 2021 in the case of our research).

So it's a snapshot of current mortality conditions, if they were to continue without any improvements or deterioration.

Demographers find life expectancy a very useful summary measure of population mortality because it's comparable across countries and over time.

Large swings upwards or downwards can tell us something dramatic has changed, as it has with COVID. The size of these drops allows us to compare mortality shocks across time and place.

Life expectancy during COVID-19

We found there was much more variation between countries in the impact of the pandemic on mortality in 2021 compared with 2020.

Life expectancy went down for virtually every country we studied in 2020, with the exception of Denmark and Norway. But in 2021, for some countries, life expectancy improved from 2020, while for others, it got even worse.

The further falls we found in eastern Europe were likely because the region avoided some of the early COVID waves during 2020, combined with lower vaccine uptake when large waves did arrive in 2021. Bulgaria was the most extreme example, with a staggering loss of 3.5 years since 2019 (1.5 years in 2020 and two years in 2021).

A chart showing life expectancy changes for many countries between 2019 and 2020.
(Jennifer Beam Dowd et al.)

Despite an early vaccine rollout, the US continued to diverge from western Europe with an additional loss of almost three months in 2021 after losing over two years in 2020. The US had lower vaccine and booster uptake compared with western European peers, likely accounting for some of this difference in 2021.

But life expectancy in the US has been lagging behind European countries for many years, so some of this US disadvantage may reflect underlying health vulnerabilities that were exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.

While most of their life expectancy losses can be attributed to confirmed COVID deaths, the US also saw continued increases in deaths due to drug overdoses.

England and Wales fell somewhere in the middle, gaining 2.1 months in 2021 after a loss of almost a year in 2020.

Even for countries that did relatively well, COVID still derailed the trajectory of mortality improvements we would normally see year on year.

Life expectancy at birth by country, 2019–2021

Overall, deaths shifted slightly towards younger people in 2021 compared with 2020.

This is likely due to better vaccine coverage and more precautions at older ages.

Indeed, countries with better vaccine coverage for those over age 60 did better in life expectancy.

Mortality over age 80 in the US even returned to pre-pandemic levels. But overall life expectancy was worse in 2021 due to worsening mortality under age 60.

A comparison bar chart showing the life expectancies for multiple countries in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
(Jennifer Beam Dowd et al.)

We also compared recent life expectancy declines with historical crises which have led to significant deaths.

Losses to the degree we've seen during the pandemic haven't been recorded since the second world war in western Europe, or since the breakup of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, previous flu epidemics have seen fairly rapid bounce-backs of life expectancy levels. COVID's impact so far has been larger and more persistent, belying the common claim that it's "just like the flu."

Limitations, and looking ahead

Because life expectancy estimates require fine-grained data on deaths by age and sex, we were not able to calculate life expectancy accurately for all countries around the world in this study.

We know that countries such as Brazil and Mexico suffered large life expectancy losses in 2020, and it's likely that they continued to suffer additional losses in 2021.

COVID mortality in countries like India may never be accurately tallied due to data limitations, but we know the death toll has been substantial.

Looking forward, the prospects for life expectancy recovery in 2022 and beyond are still hazy. We expect continued divergence due to country differences in vaccine and booster uptake, previous infections, and continued public health measures (or lack thereof).

The full impact of delayed healthcare and ongoing health system strain remains to be seen.

New variants that evade existing immunity are likely to arise, and the longer-term impact of COVID infections on the health of survivors is a big unknown.

While we hope that mortality will return to pre-pandemic levels (and even start improving again), sustained excess deaths in England and elsewhere in 2022 suggests we have not fully bounced back from the mortality impact of the pandemic, and the path to recovery remains uncertain.The Conversation

Jennifer Beam Dowd, Professor of Demography and Population Health, University of Oxford and Deputy Director, Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford; José Manuel Aburto, Brass Blacker Associate Professor of Demography at LSHTM and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford, and Ridhi Kashyap, Professor of Demography & Computational Social Science, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Black Canada Lynx Caught on Camera For The First Time, And There's Video

Friday, 21 October 2022 02:20 Written by
Black Canada lynxA still from the captured footage. (Jung, Mammalia, 2022)

The smartphones in our pockets have changed our lives in a multitude of ways – not least because we always have a camera to hand to capture special occasions, strange events, and perhaps the occasional rare wildlife sighting.

On 29 August 2020, near the town of Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada, Thomas Jung – a wildlife biologist with the Government of Yukon's Department of Environment – saw a sight he knew few had ever witness before.

Luckily for us, he managed to quickly get his phone out and film it, giving the world a good look at a black-coated Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis).

The fur on these big cats is typically silvery gray in the winter, and a darker reddish brown during the summer months. The appearance of a black (or melanistic) Canadian lynx is therefore of great interest to experts.

"There are only a small number of records of coat color polymorphisms in the genus Lynx," writes Jung in his published paper.

"The adaptive significance of melanism in lynx is unknown, but the loss of camouflage when hunting during winter is likely maladaptive."

A black Canada lynx is going to have a much harder time blending in as easily when hunting prey like the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) – which, Jung speculates, might explain, likely explains why there aren't a lot of the cats with this color fur around.

Jung viewed the animal from a distance of around 50 meters (roughly 160 feet), which didn't seem too perturbed by the presence of people nearby. In the 30-second clip you can also hear a dog barking, which might be what eventually caused the big cat to slowly sneak away.

The brevity of the sighting means it hasn't been possible to run any detailed examinations of the lynx's coat color, beyond a few quick observations. Although the footage is rather shaky and pixelated, several experts have confirmed that the creature is indeed a Canada lynx.

"It had a black coat containing whitish gray guard hairs throughout, as well as whitish gray hairs in the facial ruff and the rostrum and dorsal regions," reports Jung.

Bear this in mind the next time that you're out and about with your smartphone: as well as snapping photos of the kids and the pets, you might also get the chance to record footage of an animal that's never been seen before.

While coat color doesn't usually vary much in the case of the Canada lynx, color variations in other species, including bears and wolves, can be incredibly diverse. As with the Canada lynx, it's thought that color ties into how animals hunt for food, or even provide advantages in cooling down or warming up.

Throughout the animal kingdom, camouflage and colors that blend in with the background can help in sneaking up on prey (or avoiding predators). Bright colors that stand out can help in attracting mates (or putting off predators). Sadly, color changes can also come about because of human activity too.

Keeping track of the range of colors possible in a population of mammals could have significance in predicting the way a species might react to changes in their environment.

"Indeed, with increased competition by coyotes (Canis latrans) a concern for Canada lynx encountering increasingly shallow snow as a result of climate change, the added disadvantage of lost camouflage to melanistic lynx hunting hares during winter would likely result in melanism being maladaptive," writes Jung.

The research has been published in Mammalia.

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Canada needs to encourage more youths to pursue skilled trade jobs

Thursday, 20 October 2022 03:02 Written by

Students are being urged to enter the skilled trades as the industry faces labour shortages. (Shutterstock)

Mojan Naisani Samani, McMaster University and Rick Hackett, McMaster University

You may have noticed lately that it can take weeks to book a technician to look at your furnace, or that scheduling an appointment to fix your car means waiting longer than you’re used to.

These are tangible signs that we are experiencing a shortage of skilled tradespeople — a problem that is set to worsen unless it is addressed immediately.

It’s easy to overlook the importance of skilled trade jobs. Unless someone works in trades, or knows someone who does, the reason why there are fewer plumbers still working might not be so obvious — that is, until the faucet starts leaking or a pipe bursts.

We rely on tradespeople to keep our utilities running, fix our appliances, build and maintain our roads and many other things that are central to our everyday lives. Among the many issues contributing to the crisis in the travel industry, for example, is a shortage of pilots and mechanics.

Recovering from COVID-19

More insidious and threatening than longer wait times is the corrosive impact the trade shortage is having on businesses. Many are not only struggling to grow without an adequate number of workers, but are also finding it hard just to keep up with demand.

An October survey of 445 companies by Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters found that the worker shortage has significantly impeded the trade sector’s recovery from COVID-19.

Forty-two per cent of respondents reported their companies had lost or turned down contracts, or paid late delivery penalties because of a lack of workers. About 17 per cent of respondents said that their company was considering moving outside of Canada to find workers. Seventy-seven per cent of companies said attracting and retaining quality workers was their biggest concern.

The scarcer tradespeople become, the harder it will be to keep things running, and the more expensive it is to pay for their work when we can find them. Those issues, in turn, make it harder to attract businesses to Ontario and Canada.

Trade worker shortage

In part, the shortage is a matter of demographics. The baby boomers who built, fixed, maintained, baked and helped keep communities functioning are retiring, and there are more waves of retirement to come in the years ahead. BuildForce Canada projects that, by 2027, approximately 13 per cent of the construction sector will reach retirement age.

The problem isn’t just that these workers are retiring, but that they are not being replaced. The stigma that has developed around being a tradesperson is one reason why this is.

A woman fixing a sink in a bathroom.
It’s possible to be successful and entrepreneurial as a tradesperson. (Shutterstock)

Even though many skilled tradespeople can make far more money than many so-called professionals, most children grow up seeing university as the best, most respectable post-secondary option, and community colleges and trade schools are viewed as second-tier fallbacks.

Immigration — a potential source of new tradespeople — is not making up the gap, either. There are barriers that prevent newcomers from taking up the trades they learned in their home countries and practising them in Canada.

In addition, as the supply of tradespeople continues to shrink, the next generation of tradespeople will find it more difficult to line up apprenticeships because there will be fewer mentors available to train them.

Closing the gap

Fortunately, there are some tactics that can help fix the current shortage of tradespeople. These strategies include:

  • Removing obstacles to women and minorities entering the trades, including fostering workplace cultures that welcome them and help them to adapt.

  • Providing more hands-on learning, starting earlier in life, to foster interest in the trades and demonstrate how it is possible to be successful and entrepreneurial as a tradesperson.

  • Highlighting role models to show how rewarding a career in the trades can be.

Ontario, through its Skills Development Fund, has committed $200 million to connect job seekers with the skills and training they require for well-paying jobs. Much of this fund focuses on the skilled trades by supporting pre-apprenticeship training programs.

As employment researchers, we studied one such program, the Tools in the Trades Bootcamp, presented by Support Ontario Youth on behalf of the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development.

 

The program featured 59 intensive, one-day bootcamp sessions across Ontario from September 2021 until March 2022. It included 46 sessions for high school students and 13 for targeted adults, focusing on trades in construction, industry, service and transportation.

Participants reported an improved appreciation for working in the trades, and a heightened intention of pursuing a career in the field. They also established new contacts with peers of similar interests, potential mentors and prospective employers.

While our analysis shows promising outcomes to combat the shortages in skilled trades, these bootcamps are only the start of addressing the issue. More initiatives and programs, both provincially and federally, and from both public and private sectors, are needed to educate and reduce barriers for individuals entering the skilled trades.The Conversation

Mojan Naisani Samani, PhD Candidate, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University and Rick Hackett, Canada Research Chair, Organizational Behaviour & Human Performance, McMaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What Parliament refused to hear about Canada’s new extreme intoxication law

Wednesday, 19 October 2022 11:08 Written by

Minister of Justice David Lametti participates in an Ottawa news conference in June 2022 on proposed amendments to the Criminal Code in response to a Supreme Court of Canada decision involving a defence of extreme intoxication. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Kerri Anne Froc, University of New Brunswick

In case you missed it, and if you blinked you probably did, Parliament passed Bill C-28 in June 2022. Bill C-28 amended provisions of the Criminal Code that restricted those who commit violence from using excessive consumption of intoxicants as a defence.

Parliament acted swiftly following the Supreme Court’s decision in R v. Brown to strike down Sec. 33.1 of the code after Matthew Brown, a 26-year-old university student, argued he was too high on mushrooms to remember breaking into a woman’s Calgary home and attacking her.

 

However, more than a dozen women’s organizations pleaded with the government to slow down and treat their concerns about Bill C-28’s effectiveness seriously.

Parliament didn’t listen, to the detriment of women and Canadian democracy. While Bill C-28 purports to impose some constitutional constraints on the “extreme intoxication” defence, in practice it will do no such thing. Everyone should be concerned.

Most victims are women

The effects of the extreme intoxication defence have not been felt equally by men and women.

The original Sec. 33.1 was a response to the Supreme Court’s 1994 R v. Daviault decision, creating the “extreme intoxication” defence under common law and using it to acquit an accused of sexual assault. Henri Daviault was acquitted of sexually assaulting a 65-year-old woman with a physical disability after consuming several beers and brandy.

My co-authored article with University of Ottawa legal scholar Elizabeth Sheehy shows that men have overwhelmingly raised extreme intoxication in defending themselves, and most of their victims have been women.

It’s true that the state of extreme intoxication is, well, extreme. There must be expert evidence that the accused was so intoxicated that he was operating as an automaton — not only unaware that he was committing a crime, but unable even to control his body.

It’s also true that the medical community believes alcohol alone will not cause such a state. This means that the defence should succeed only in the rarest cases. However, our research showed that it succeeded in six of 30 cases in the year between Daviault and the passage of Sec. 33.1, and that alcohol was the intoxicant in most of these successful cases.

Furthermore, the defence was raised with some regularity even after the passage of Sec. 33.1 — 86 times to date.

Two criteria must be met

When an accused person is able to find an expert to testify that he was acting as an automaton as a result of self-induced intoxication, the Criminal Code’s new Sec. 33.1 now means that the defence can be used unless the Crown can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused ought to have foreseen two things.

First, he should have known that consuming those particular intoxicants would cause him to lose control. Second, he should have foreseen that harm to another person would result.

It will be nearly impossible for Crown prosecutors to show that the accused should have foreseen the harm. Most extremely intoxicated people do not harm others, and there is no way of proving that taking a particular combination of intoxicants causes violence.

Even Brown’s defence lawyer says the new law will be “entirely ineffective” in restricting the defence.

 

Criminal lawyers will now be able to raise self-induced extreme intoxication as a defence more frequently. This will not only likely result in further acquittals, but also lengthier trials, which are more arduous for victims.

The availability of the extreme intoxication defence will also affect decisions about prosecutions and plea deals since prosecutors will need to assess the likelihood of conviction. Police will consider the accused’s intoxication level in deciding whether to charge them. Women’s reporting rate for violence, already extremely low, may drop even further.

Parliament can make its own assessment

The Supreme Court struck down Sec. 33.1 of the Criminal Code because it ruled the section could result in the conviction of “innocent” individuals too intoxicated to know what they were doing.

It also suggested that a future law restricting the defence could be constitutional if it required the Crown to show that an extremely intoxicated accused could have reasonably foreseen both that he would lose control and that harm to another would result.
The court also made clear that Parliament is entitled to deference — in other words, parliamentarians can make their own assessments of what the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires when responding to the very serious issue of violence against women.

Parliament had good reasons to depart from the Supreme Court’s suggested fix, given the flaws of its R v Brown ruling.

The court failed to follow its own prior case law that women’s equality rights should be considered when deciding whether sexual assault laws violate men’s right to a fair trial under Sec. 7 of the Charter.

A man in a red robe with a white fur trim smiles sitting behind a desk.
Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Kasirer smiles during an official welcome ceremony in Ottawa in November 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Instead, Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote that women’s rights should be included in the “societal interests” the court considers in deciding whether Sec. 33.1 justifiably violates men’s rights.

In theory, Sec. 1 of the Charter permits government limitations to any right so long as they are “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” In practice, the court has never ruled that a Sec. 7 violation is saved by such Sec. 1 considerations.

Parliament’s approach is identical to the one suggested by the Supreme Court. But the federal government had a choice in the way it amended Sec. 33.1, given the court’s emphasis on deference.

For instance, it could have required only that the Crown show that it was reasonably foreseeable that the accused would lose control.

‘Performative politics’

Unfortunately, Parliament bypassed the usual democratic processes. This included studying the bill in committee hearings where parliamentarians could have heard from expert witnesses and women’s groups.

The law passed within days of its introduction. Such speed is ironic given the government’s insistence that reliance on the extreme intoxication defence would be rare. If the extreme intoxication defence is so rare, Parliament had time to carefully deliberate and get it right.

Its fast-track approach to a flawed law illustrates the problem of “performative politics.” Results take a back seat to appearance, and the abandonment of careful deliberation is rationalized as necessary because of a righteous cause and a fearful population.

Our government still hasn’t learned the hard lesson that when this happens, the constitutional rights of women and other marginalized groups suffer.The Conversation

Kerri Anne Froc, Associate Law Professor, University of New Brunswick

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Teenager jumps off bridge to escape police arrest in US

Tuesday, 18 October 2022 01:51 Written by
The police officers have captured a 14-year-old boy who jumped off of a 25-to-30-foot bridge after running out of gas during a pursuit in Detroit, Michigan, the United States.

According to Fox 2 Detroit reports, the teenager on Wednesday night, was suspected to be a thief who had stolen one of three Mustang Shelby GT500s sports cars from the Flat Rock Assembly Plant lot in Metro Detroit.

It said when one of the cars was spotted, the officers with the Brownstown Police Department (BPD) called and tried to stop the driver, but he refused and this led to giving him a chase.

However, authorities eventually succeeded in pursuing the teenage thief who was driving fast until he ran out of gas near a flyover.

The reports revealed that in an attempt to keep himself from being taken into custody, the driver decided to jump off the bridge over 20 feet in height.

“It was a tall bridge. We didn’t expect that. I don’t think the gentlemen expected it to be a far drop either,” BPD Lieutenant Andrew Starzec said.

A group of officers, firefighters and paramedics proceeded to recover the suspect, who was identified and transport him to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries.

The reports said his mother was notified, and further details, including the legal ramifications the minor will face, are presently unknown.

This situation was not the only recent incident of cars being stolen from the Flat Rock Assembly Plant lot, as four other vehicles were stolen earlier this week.

“I know that there were four stolen Mustangs out of the same lot the night before. That will be part of our investigation to see if it was that crew or a different one,” Starzec observed.

A month earlier, 12 Mustangs were also stolen from the lot, and there’s reportedly been a spike in carjackings all around the Detroit area. With some thieves being as young as 11 years old, authorities suspect that a ring of older adults may be pulling the strings and getting local kids to do their dirty work.

“The older offenders know, ‘I can do this and not really have my hands on it because I didn’t really steal the car,” Clive Stewart, lieutenant of the Detroit Police Department, said, Fox 2 Detroit reports

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Why Donald Trump was bad for America but good for Canada

Monday, 10 October 2022 23:25 Written by

Donald Trump is seen in London in December 2019 during a joint news conference with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Galen Watts, KU Leuven

By now, it’s trite to say that the rise of Donald Trump as a political figure has been a travesty for American democracy.

Although the United States was already polarized prior to Trump becoming president, the country has increasingly veered into “pernicious polarization” territory since 2016, with partisan hostility at the highest it’s been in decades.

Despite lying thousands of times, flouting basic standards of human decency and showing little respect for American institutions, Trump has managed to shape the Republican Party in his image to the extent that loyalty to him now forms the litmus test for public legitimacy on the right.

Meanwhile, the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021 solidified what Democrats have feared since Trump announced his presidential campaign: that Trump and the MAGA Republican Party he’s birthed are a grave threat to American democracy.

Scoundrel, saviour

Understood from a cultural sociological perspective, Trump is the ultimate symbol of American polarization: he is a scoundrel to those on the left, and a saviour to those on the right.

Cultural sociology examines the role of symbols, narratives and meaning in social and political life. It begins from the assumption that everything is a matter of interpretation. People say and do things on the basis of what those things mean to them, and meanings vary from one person or group to the next.

So cultural sociologists like me are interested in the stories and scripts people have in their heads because they affect how they act.

As sociologists William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas famously put it: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

Canadians and Trump

As Trump fuelled polarization in the U.S., he was having a much different impact on Canada. A cultural sociological perspective helps explain why.

Two things need to be noted to make sense of this:

First, anti-Americanism has long been part of the Canadian national identity. As American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset wrote in his book Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada: “Canadians are the world’s oldest and most continuing un-Americans.”

Canadian nationalism often takes the form of pride over not being American.

Second, since the launch of his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has been almost unanimously disliked and disavowed by Canadians on both the left and right.

A teenaged boy and a man pose for a photo with a snow sculpture that depicts a yellow-haired man wearing a red tie melting into the water.
A teenaged boy and his father pose for a photo with a snow sculpture they created on their front lawn in St. John’s, NL, on Jan. 20, 2021, depicting Trump descending into the water. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Daly

Polls taken in August 2016 showed that, if given the chance, only 15 to 20 per cent of Canadians would have cast a ballot for Trump, while 73 to 80 per cent would have voted for Hillary Clinton. And a poll taken just prior to election day in November 2016 found that more Canadians would support a third-party candidate than Trump.

This helps explain why, between 2016 and 2020, Canadians were united in their contempt for Trump, who served as a bipartisan symbol of evil they rallied against regardless of their political leanings.

This is evident in Canadian media coverage during this period. Upon analyzing mainstream print media articles published between 2016-2020 for an ongoing research project, I identified common themes: Canadian media increasingly associated “America” with “Trump,” and both of these with authoritarianism, selfishness, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, ignorance, irrationality, dishonesty and a lack of concern for the least advantaged.

Friendship on the rocks?

These attitudes were also reflected in public opinion surveys.

The Pew Research Center found that the number of Canadians who favourably viewed the U.S. fell from 68 per cent in 2015 to 43 per cent in 2017, and then again to 39 per cent in 2018 – the lowest percentage ever recorded.

In 2020, polls found that the number of Canadians who said they consider the U.S. “a friend” declined 29 percentage points since 2013, when pollsters first began asking the question.

A dark-haired man looks down skeptically at the outreached hand of an older blond man sitting next to him in an ornate office.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Trump in the White House in February 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

These shifts suggest that Trump really did change how Canadians regard the U.S. But he also changed how Canadians regard themselves.

I would argue that Trump led Canadians to be more receptive to progressive policy orientations — if only as a means of distinguishing themselves from Trump’s America.

The ‘Trump’ problem for Conservatives

Consider that nearly all attempts by conservative politicians to brand themselves as the Canadian Trump between 2016 and 2020 led to failure.

Not long after announcing he was seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, business mogul Kevin O’Leary’s campaign was dead in the water — in part owing to the obvious similarities between him and Trump.

In 2018, the leader of the Parti Québécois at the time, Jean-François Lisée, channelled his inner Trump by floating the idea of building a fence at a Québec-U.S. border point to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing.

A grey-haired man with glasses speaks.
Lisée is seen during a campaign stop in Lavaltrie, Que., in September 2018. His party finished fourth in the election. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Lisée’s party was rewarded with a pitiful fourth-place finish in the 2018 Québec general election, forcing him to resign as party leader.

These examples show that being seen as Trump-like in Canada became a death sentence happily exploited by more progressive parties.

The Trump card was so potent that when Andrew Scheer’s replacement, Erin O’Toole, took over the party in 2020, he made a point of emphasizing that he was not a Canadian version of Trump.

O’Toole’s starkest departure from Scheer, his predecessor, revolved around social issues. Scheer identified as a “pro-life” social conservative whereas O’Toole publicly identified as “socially progressive.” And these words weren’t just rhetoric.

A balding man in a suit is seen in silhouette in a darkened room.
O'Toole speaks during a media availability on Parliament Hill in January 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

In early 2022, Canadian parliamentarians unanimously passed landmark legislation to ban conversion therapy in Canada — a bipartisan success story that O’Toole was instrumental in securing.

Finally, consider the dramatic differences between the Canadian and American response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canadian politicians were more willing to follow the directions of public health experts, and Canadians were more supportive of vaccine mandates. Canada’s death rate is significantly lower, while its vaccination rate is higher than that of the U.S. Some have argued that’s because America’s response got snared in partisan politics, unlike Canada’s.

So, not only did public recognition and respect of members of the LGBTQ+ community increase in the wake of Trump’s election, but lives were saved as a result of the leftward shift among Canadian conservatives.

And in all cases, the Trump effect was at play.

Trump in 2024?

This isn’t to suggest Trump’s continuing influence over the Republican Party is good for Canada. If America descends into civil war, Canadians will suffer with them.

Trump’s rise has also helped radicalize the Canadian far right. StatsCan found that hate crimes rose by 37 per cent in 2020, and, per capita, Canada is among the greatest global sources of extreme right-wing online content.

The ascent of Pierre Poilievre to the Conservative Party leadership suggests there’s a Canadian audience for Trump’s brand of toxic partisanship and crude populism.

If Trump runs again in 2024, his pugnacious style and anti-democratic ambitions could continue to appeal to some Canadians.

But it’s likely he’ll motivate Canadians to continue to work towards a more inclusive and egalitarian society.The Conversation

Galen Watts, FWO / Banting Fellow, Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published in USA & CANADA
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