Leaving on a jet plane...

Flight in about 12 hours or so, long-haul, multi-city and connections, should be a long day, but totally worth it at the end. Not sure about connectivity in the interim, but will try to post an update here and there if I can.

No I'm not nervous.

About that anyway. There is so much more to do between now and then that I worry about each step individually. On the day itself, when there is no longer any single obstacle remaining, then I will be nervous.

Too many things to get done, and I'm running out of days, as the song goes.

The continuing assault on Democracy

So first it's the US House of Representatives which rewrites rules regarding ethics, thereby abusing their power *and* telling Americans that ethics in government are not that important. Especially if a member of the party in power is in trouble.

In Canada, we have a Liberal government that desperately tries to pretend it still has the "moral authority" to govern, yet does everything possible to prove otherwise. The last minute declaration by the Liberals that they are going to take opposition days away, and then accuse the Conservative party of playing politics with House rules, quite frankly defies description. You'd think such naked power grabs would incense the electorate, but the citizens are fat, lazy and content and won't care about the gross abuses of power until it's too late.

Friendly dictatorship indeed...isn't there anyone who wants to get into politics for the good of the country, rather than the good of the ego and bank account?

Immigration woes

The Globe and Mail is starting a new series on immigration, with the first instalment found here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050415.wimmi16/BNStory/National/

While it's a promising start, the main point that needs to be repeated over and over again is that our immigration system is broken. This is bad for both Canada and Canadians, and for the would-be Canadians who apply to stay here.

The main problem is that our immigration system receives somewhere between 250,000 to 300,000 new Canadians each and every year. I do not believe our immigration system has the resources to deal with even half of that amount. Why is this a problem?

For Canada and Canadians, it's bad because we have no idea who we are letting in or if they deserve to enter the country for the reasons stated. We are letting in terrorists, war criminals and other undesirables, which affects our national security interests, not to mention our reputation in the world.

For legitimate would-be Canadians, the system fails them by providing them with an easy and painless way to enter the country and build a new life for themselves. Qualified immigrants spend months or years waiting to get their status in Canada and then find their education and work experience are not recognized here. Even though Canada needs qualified and skilled immigrants to supplement our aging population, many of them simply give up in frustration and move somewhere else. Contrary to popular belief, this is bad for Canada.

Canadians need to wake up to the fact that we are no longer the best country in the world and that we are competing with other countries to attract hard-working and qualified immigrants. We also need to realize that our immigration system, such as it is, is encouraging people to lie and cheat to get into the country.

In a perfect world, the government would put substantial new resources into two key areas of our immigration system. The first is assessment and processing, whereby qualified immigrants and genuine refugees would have their claims, skills and qualifications thoroughly reviewed and assessed in a short period of time. This would mean increasing the number of people we have working at our embassies and border crossings so that people don't have to wait for more than three months to be evaluated.

The second part is enforcement and removal. People who lied or cheated to get into the country, or have failed to live up to the conditions of their entry would be found and removed quickly. This doesn't mean removing the appeals systems outlined int he G&M article above, but rather always knowing where these people are and, when their appeals have been exhausted, having them removed immediately.

Bottom line, Canada needs immigrants for our future growth and Canada has an obligation to provide shelter and sanctuary to the oppressed and persecuted. But we need an immigration system that can properly identify who is who so that we let in genuine claimants quickly and efficiently and remove or, better yet, keep out those who are undesirables.

Sold!

I bought a house. I move in late July. It's a weird mix of eager anticipation and undefined fear.

Democracy's lost innocence

Zimbabwe had elections this week which were widely derided as unfair, even though they were largely free of violence, if not intimidation. That said, Zimbabwe is perhaps not as far from the United States after all. One of the election tactics ZANU-PF used to ensure its victory was through a technique known as gerrymandering, which involves redrawing electoral district boundaries to include voters who are sympathetic to the party making the changes. ZANU-PF redrew boundaries so that districts that were faithfully pro-MDC suddenly found their district stretched out to include ZANU-PF supporters, thereby diluting the MDC strength. This is taken from the US Republican playbook (and, to a lesser extent, the Democratic one too), which has a shameful history of drawing electoral boundaries (this site has a good example of the practice: http://deepfreeze9.blogspot.com/2004/10/redistricting-trend-towards-bantustan.html).

Lest Canadians get all high and mighty, ZANU-PF policy of tying voting records with food aid is oddly reminiscent, if not in scope but in style, of the federal Liberal Party of Canada's tactics, exposed during the ongoing Gomery Inquiry. Anyone wanting to get in the good graces of the Liberal Party had to hire buddies and family members, or donate to the Party, otherwise they could forget about ever getting any government business.

I start to wonder if non-democratic countries are become more democratic, or are democracies losing their virtue though scorched-earth politicking. Case in point are the decidedly undemocratic Republicans who want to change the debate rules in the US Senate to make it harder for the opposition to filibuster (a well-known and legal parliamentary delay tactic). Do these Republicans really believe that they will never again be part of the opposition? Do they care that they are undermining democracy? Or do they care only about the next election cycle?

And on a final, farcical note, Scott Reid, PM mouthpiece, was heard to say (with a straight face, apparently) that Paul Martin is interested in letting Gomery come to the truth so that all Canadians can get the answers that they deserve. He also chastised the Conservatives for threatening to call an election, which would deny Canadians the right to those answers.

Um...earth to Scott, your boss did just that a year ago. If he didn't care about the answers then, why does he care about them now?

Music of the Memory yet again

I found a bag of cassettes in the trunk of my car. When I bought a new car a couple of years back, I finally upgraded from tape deck to CD player, so all the tapes in my old car were put in a bag and left in the trunk of my new car. I had a flashback about this (my trunk was, and is to this day, a mess) and dug out the battered old bag. Among the highlights are INXS "X", Glass Tiger "Diamond Sun" and classic Midnight Oil, including my favourite tune off "Red Sails in the Sunset", an overblown song called "Jimmy Sharman's Boxers" (which is followed up by a curious instrumental piece known as "Bakerman").

Below is a link to an article outlining what had Midnight Oil (well-known social activists) riled up against Jimmy Sharman and his travelling band of boxers.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/14/1050172535850.html?oneclick=true

Hack, cough, wheeze...

Sick, first time in a while. I'd avoided illnesses amongst friends and colleagues, but curiously, when no one close to me was ill, I started with the illness routine. The odd thing is how many people are telling me to get drugs. Now, I'm not a doctor, but this cold doesn't feel any different from others that I've had. So I'll sniffle for a few days, cough up a lung or two for a few days after that and then all will be normal again. So why bother with drugs?

Indeed, the North American propensity to run to the doctor for every sniffle is part of the problem of drug-resistant viruses. Obviously, if you are ill with no signs of a recovery after a few days, then you should see a doctor (and be careful of meningitis, which carries flu-like symptoms until it's too late), but the run of mill viruses are no match for our immune systems. So load up on the OJ or other fruits and vegetables and let nature take its course.

I'm still calling in sick tomorrow though...

Senate Reform (again)

With Paul Martin's first Senate appointments (conveniently announced just before the Easter long week-end), the topic of Senate reform is once again on everyone's mind.

I submit, once again, my modest proposals for Senate reform, via this link:

http://archive.aiesec.ws/sandeep.aiesec.ws/stories/storyReader$177.html