Dec 31, 2006 Stephen, Steve Stephane
A feast of Stephens
I know it’s personal, perhaps even petty of me to get caught up in what was clearly a minor moment from a major occasion — Stephen Harper’s first annual round of year-end media interviews as our prime minister.
I mean, Harper was nothing if not newsworthy, generating plenty of pre-Christmas headlines even if nothing he said was actually new — acknowledging the “tremendous challenge” of the environment and claiming to lead the “first government in history” to propose national regulations for air pollution; defending his decision to recognize Quebec as a nation within Canada as a way to “feel good about ourselves” while giving the finger to the separatists because now “we’re not going to pay attention to them” (nyah, nyah); reiterating his reiteration that he won’t “cut and run” in Afghanistan (“I tell people,” he told people, “I couldn’t care less if the opposition ultimately brings me down and defeats me in an election over this,” and meaning not a syllable of it); speaking for “all of the civilized world” in declaring that we cannot deal with duly elected Middle East governments “whose principle and only objective is the eradication of the other side;” claiming his personal relationship with George W. Bush had solved the softwood lumber logjam; and, of course, declaring himself ready, willing and eager for an election on any and all of the above.
I’m sure in other circumstances I could find something to disagree with in every one of those statements, but I won’t.
That’s because, somewhere in the middle of Harper’s “wide-ranging” year-end interview with CTV’s Lloyd Robertson and Robert Fife, the TV network replayed a sound-bite from a news conference last summer in which U.S. president George W. Bush referred, more than a few times, to our prime minister as “Steve.”
Which raised — finally — the only important question from 2006: Should it be Stephen or Steve?
Two thousand and six was the Year of the Stephen… er, Steve.
In January, we got a prime minister named Stephen.
In December, the Liberals elected a Stephane as their new leader.
In between, ATV news anchor Steve Murphy wrote a best-selling autobiography of his life Before the Camera.
Stephen Colbert, the American satirist who says he's “no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas,” became Merriam Webster’s word-maker of the year for the now ubiquitous new word “truthiness.”
And then there was Steve Nash, the Phoenix Suns’ point guard, who won his second straight NBA MVP and third Canadian male athlete of the year honour.
And Steve Downie, the feisty good bad-boy star forward for Canada’s world junior hockey team.
And Stephen Lewis, who completed his five-year term as UN special envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa.
And, of course, not to forget Steve Wright, the cross-dressing British truck driver who wore high heels, a PVC skirt and a wig when meeting prostitutes, and was charged last week as the Suffolk Strangler…
OK, let’s forget him.
The point is, which should it be? Steve or Stephen?
I was born a Stephen, briefly endured playground taunts of Step-Hen, and became Steve through little league and minor hockey. In my high school yearbook, I’m both Stephen and Steve, depending on who was writing the entry. My first yellowed newspaper bylines say “By Steve Kimber.” Some people called me Steve, some Stephen. I’m not sure I cared.
It wasn’t until I met my wife 30 years ago that I became Stephen, and woe to anyone who suggested otherwise. I’ve been Stephen — and happy to be — ever since.
Which may be why, listening to Stephen Harper talk about his reaction to being called Steve made me — for the first and likely last time ever — feel some kinship to the man.
“I have to say I was a bit surprised when [Georgie Bush] called me Steve,” Steve… er, Stephen told CTV. “It made my mother quite angry, because she’s made it her whole life to get people to call me Stephen instead of Steve, so I don’t know if she called the White House or not.”
I’m guessing she did, Steve… er, Stephen. And a Happy New Year to all.
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Steve Kimber, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College, is an award-winning author of five nonfiction books and a novel, Reparations, all written under the name Stephen.
Dec. 24. 2006: School board fired
Firing board just the first step
It is difficult to fault Education Minister Karen Casey for her decision last week to fire — or should I say “relieve of their responsibilities and authorities” — all 13 elected members of the Halifax Regional School Board.
It is easier to quibble over where the minister, and her now one-person unelected school board, goes from here.
At the level of what the public saw — pitched battles over seemingly picayune matters like seating arrangements, members walking out in a huff whenever things didn’t go their way, criminal charges against one board member, an ongoing investigation of another, conflict of interest allegations against still others, backroom screaming matches over who said what about whose race — the board had become so mysfunctional it not only requires a new word to encompass the sheer, colossal absurdity of it all but it had also become clear to anyone who even glanced at the carnage in the morning-after news reports of its deliberations that the relationships among board members were wrecked beyond repair.
But there was another level, one beyond the media glare, where board members also operated, usually far more quietly and, often, effectively. They answered angry, worried, curious phone calls and emails from constituents at all hours of the day and night; dealt with individual questions and concerns among parents, teachers and students; and acted as honest-broker go-betweens between members of the community and the people who actually run the system on a day-to-day basis.
In firing the board, Casey eliminated that important democratic, representative function too. And, worse, offered no indication she has any plans to bring forward the currently scheduled Fall 2008 date for new elections and/or to deal with the problems that have made our school boards — which should be among the most vital elected bodies in any democracy — embarrassments and laughing stocks.
My colleague David Rodenhiser, in his day-after column on the school board firing, offered an incisive prescription the province could — and should — use to fix what ails school boards across the province: provide public funding so candidates running in board elections can get their messages out, increase remuneration for members to reflect the real significance of their jobs, and stop piggybacking school board elections on municipal campaigns so education issues don’t get lost in the media shuffle. (On that last point, I’d only add that we in the media should also resolve to cover school boards as something more than entertaining theatre.)
The education minister should couple a promise to bring those urgently-needed reforms forward in the spring session of the legislature with the announcement of Fall 2007 elections for a new Halifax school board.
‘Tis the season for a plateful of those bad news mumble-statements and furtive press releases politicians hope we’re all too busy shopping and partying to pay attention to.
On Wednesday, for example, Finance Minister Michael Baker announced a new austerity program designed to cut $10–20 million in spending to prevent the province from sliding into deficit by the end of the fiscal year.
“"We must keep our expenses in line,” Baker tut-tutted with barely a blush of shame.
You may remember that back in the spring when the Tories were courting our votes, the province’s finances were so robust and our prospects so rosy the finance minister’s smiley-faced budget included both tax cuts and nearly $400 million in new spending.
On the same day Baker was doing his now-you-see-a-surplus-now-you-don’t dance at Province House, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was issuing a late afternoon hello-goodbye statement in Ottawa, explicitly rejecting some key accountability measures from Mr. Justice John Gomery. Those proposals were designed to reduce the kind of political control over the civil service that allowed the sponsorship scandal to escape scrutiny for so long.
Now that he’s prime minister — thanks in no small measure to public revulsion over the sponsorship scandal — Mr. Harper is a lot less interested in allowing public servants to talk about what goes on behind his government’s closed doors.
A lump of coal in his stocking too.
But not in yours. Happy holidays, and thank you for reading.
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Stephen Kimber, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College, is an award-winning author of five nonfiction books and a novel, Reparations.
Dec. 17, 2006: Dossa in Iran
The Holocaust and the West’s double standard
Forget for a moment the knee-jerk need to be shocked and appalled that Shiraz Dossa, a St. Francis Xavier University political science professor, presented a paper at a “bizarre international conference.” (CTV) Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is, of course, “a lunatic and dangerous man” (Yvon Grenier, St. F.X. political science department chair), organized the conference attended by 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, “including some of the world's most notorious Holocaust deniers, Nazi sympathizers and racists.” (CTV again) Among them, presumably, Shiraz Dossa.
“St. Francis Xavier should be wincing at the fact one of its own would be a key participant in so foul an exercise,” harrumphed a Globe and Mail editorial. The university’s chancellor quickly saw the Globe’s “winced” and raised it, pronouncing his entire campus “shocked.” While tepidly defending Dossa’s academic freedom, two dozen St. F.X. professors signed a statement expressing themselves “profoundly embarrassed.” Not to be outdone, Globe columnist John Ibbitson bulldozed past any airy-fairy notions of academic freedom. “One hopes [the university] will decide to fire him.” By week’s end, St. F.X. officials announced they would meet with Dossa this week to discuss his “accountability.”
Before we have the professor drawn, hanged, quartered and burned, we should take a closer look at exactly what he is saying.
The problem is that few of us — including those who seem to believe a few months in a Syrian torture chamber proper penance — have actually read the paper, which Dossa presented at the Tehran conference last week.
What we know so far is based largely on a telephone interview Dossa did with the Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders. In it, he explicitly dismissed Holocaust deniers as “hacks and lunatics… I frankly wouldn’t even shake hands with most of them.”
He explained his paper was about “the war on terrorism and how the Holocaust plays into it.”
Essentially, Dossa argues Western guilt over the Holocaust —“which, of course, is a reality,” he was at pains to note — has influenced American and European policies in support of Israel since before the founding of the Jewish state. This pro-Israeli tilt has come at the expense not only of Palestinians, who were turned into refugees, but also of Muslims generally, who are now the vilified “them” — the new Jews, if you like — in our you’re-with-us-or-you’re-a-terrorist New World Order.
The war on terrorism, Dossa believes, “is essentially a war on Islam.”
While far from mainstream, Dossa’s thesis is a long train ride from denying the Holocaust happened. And his argument is worth exploring.
Dossa, in effect, sees guilt over our complicity in the death of six million Jews as one way of explaining the obvious double standard the West still brings to its dealings with modern Israel and… well, let’s take Iran as our example du jour.
The United States and its allies now have their knickers in a knot over the possibility Iran might develop nuclear weapons. In a speech last spring to a pro-Israel lobby group, Vice President Dick Cheney assured his audience the U.S. was “keeping all options on the table… We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Compare and contrast that with this: As far back as 1968, the CIA knew Israel was a member of the nuclear weapons club. Did the Americans threaten Israel with sanctions, or prepare to send in the troops unless Israel gave up it nuclear ambitions? Uh, no. Since Israel refused to confirm or deny its nuclear capabilities, successive American administrations considered it unwise to inquire further.
Last week, even after Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, apparently inadvertently, confirmed his country’s nuclear power status and went on to tell a German magazine he too ruled “nothing out,” including an Israeli military strike against Tehran, the American State Department continued to dismiss reporters’ questions about Israel’s nuclear stockpile as irrelevant.
If Israel believes it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself from its Arab neighbours, surely one might understand why Iran might want a few of its own to protect itself from a threatening Israel?
What does any of this have to do with Holocaust denial? Nothing. But surely the role of the Holocaust as a “construct” — in Dossa’s words — in the geopolitics of the modern Middle East is a legitimate subject for discussion at a conference with the title, “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision.”
That so many find it unacceptable lends credence to Dossa’s argument. As one of his former students noted in a letter to the Globe: “One needs only to mention the word ‘Holocaust’ and a barrier is erected that prohibits any serious debate.”
Pity.
Stephen Kimber, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College, is an award-winning author of five nonfiction books and a novel, Reparations.
Dec. 10, 2006: The Nunn Report
Will the province learn Judge Nunn’s lessons?
To his credit, Justice Minister Murray Scott got it right. "I can't go back," he conceded in his first response to the release last week of Merlin Nunn’s report into the death of Theresa McAvoy. "I can only go ahead." But, he added with apparent sincerity, “we want to learn from this.”
His boss, on the other hand, clearly hadn't read -- or at least didn’t bother to think about -- the broader implications of the retired Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge’s comprehensive and far-reaching investigation.
"When you take a look at the issues that the Conservative government in Ottawa have been putting forward,” Premier Rodney MacDonald explained to reporters in his usual obscure way, “they've been very much in support of being stronger in that regard, so I applaud them." He kept his focus pinpoint-narrow on the Stephen-Harper, get-tough-on-crime, right-wing-agenda aspects of Judge Nunn’s report and blithely ignored a more important reality that was equally well-documented in the judge's exhaustive 381-page report and its 34 separate recommendations. The best — perhaps only — way to avoid future tragedies like Theresa McEvoy’s death is to deal with the root causes of youth crime before more young people "spiral out of control" like Archie Billard.
I don't mean to suggest here that those recommendations in the judge’s report that deal directly with protecting the public from dangerous young people are not important, or necessary. As Nunn makes clear, Ottawa needs to change the Youth Criminal Justice Act to broaden the definition of violent offenses and find ways to keep comparatively few, but potentially lethal young offenders off the streets while they await trial. And we need to streamline the legal process to make it much more efficient and effective in order to prevent exactly the kind of calamitous bureaucratic and technological breakdowns that blotted this case.
Nova Scotians, as Premier McDonald rightly pointed out, "want to know that the youth that are causing problems in our society... are being dealt with effectively, and that our judges and others have the powers necessary to deal with these issues."
That’s the easy part.
If, however, that is the only message the government takes from Justice Nunn's report, all his broader efforts — 23 volumes’ worth — will have been for nothing.
It is clear from Nunn’s report that Archie Billard’s life had spiraled out of control long before October 14, 2004, the day he got stoned, stole a Chrysler LeBaron and smashed it head-on into a car driven by McAvoy. The 52-year-old teacher’s aide and mother of three boys was killed instantly.
The province’s swift, knee-jerk decision to that tragedy — appoint Judge Nunn to conduct an inquiry — seemed, at first blush, little more than the political game of pin-the-blame-on-someone. There was widespread community outrage that Billard -- who was already facing numerous charges in connection with earlier joyriding incidents -- was not in jail at the time of the crash. So someone must pay.
To his credit, Nunn refused to take that easy route. And, instead of starting his inquiry at the point where Archie Billard first smacked up against the youth criminal justice system, Nunn unraveled that particularly messy ball of string backwards to show how and why Billard had ended up in trouble in the first place. His report clearly demonstrates that what happened in this case was “a system failure” that goes far beyond naming names and will require us, as a society, to accept collective responsibility for changing the conditions that create Archie Billards.
Nunn’s most important larger-picture recommendations, in fact, have to do with creating a comprehensive provincial strategy — managed by senior officials from community services, health, education and justice — to find ways to help youth at risk before the risk becomes criminal reality.
It won’t be easy. And success won’t come cheap. As regional school board spokesperson Doug Hadley pointed out, the judge’s recommendation that schools establish facilities for in-school suspensions, to take just one example, will mean not only finding physical space, hiring more bodies and creating new programs but also finding a way to balance those new demands with “the needs of the entire school population.”
Implementing all of Judge Nunn’s 34 recommendations will be a daunting and expensive but critically important task, and one that won’t be made easier when our premier — the person who should be showing leadership on the issue — doesn’t appear to even understand what the issues are.
Stephen Kimber, the Maclean Hunter Professor of Journalism at the University of King’s College, is the author of five nonfiction books and one novel.
From Quill & Quire online
Dec. 3, 2006: Primo puffball platitudes
Forget for the moment MacDonald's unchanging confection of over-baked, under-done puffball platitudes: "The notion of leaving our province a little better for those that follow us is not simply a cliché," he began by way of cliché, and then pressed on, piling one upon the other upon the last. "I believe we live in the best province in the country and the best country in the world. I am proud of our history and culture, our ties to the land and to the sea, our belief in hard work and our entrepreneurial spirit…"
Enough already.
Let's start instead with the few scraps of apparently real meat MacDonald tossed out at the Westin.
"Expanding our broadband Internet access is as important to our society in 2006 as electrification was in 1936," the premier informed his audience of Chamber of Commerce movers and shakers, then added this pledge: " I am committing to you today that by the end of 2009 all Nova Scotians, no matter where they live, will have 100 per cent coverage."
Ah ha, finally. Something specific.
Ooops. Not so fast, bunky.
When reporters asked him later how much all this would cost, MacDonald... er, wouldn't say. Because? Well because there might be competition to do the work, and he didn't want to give anybody ideas. (In case anyone cares to know which ballpark they'd be batting in, New Brunswick is already spending $12.5 million to do much the same in what is a geographically larger province.) The premier wouldn't even tell us the details of a pilot project for Cumberland County. That's next week's surprise.
Later in his speech, the premier convened a civics class on the virtues of voting.
Perhaps not surprisingly, he didn't cite his government's election in June as an example of what can happen when too few of us exercise our democratic franchise.
But he did, of course, manage to connect the dots between voting -- "The right to vote is something so many people throughout history have fought and died for" -- and his own ongoing, never-ending — we have an office of military affairs — support for our troops. "My friends, these young men and women deserve our thanks for putting their lives on the line, each and every day, for us and for freedom throughout the world."
Thanks, Rodney.
All of which led, in its inevitable, interminably predictable way, to the premier's announcement of a new legislative committee on -- wait for it -- Participation in the Democratic Process. Over the next six months, this committee will tour thither and yon "to gather public input. We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation," the premier solemnly declared, "to reverse the current trend."
Uh, if Rodney's so interested in democracy, why is he suddenly in such a hurry to ram through new election financing rules (ones that -- happy coincidence! -- will benefit his party) that he's called a special session of the legislature in January especially for that purpose?
A full six month's before the committee we owe it to ourselves to send out fact-finding is even due to report?
Oh, right…
As Rodney himself said near the end of his speech: "One of the great characteristics of our democracy is that commentators and critics will have their own interpretation of what I’ve just said."
We will, Rodney, we will.
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Dr. Gabrielle Horne's 80-paragraph statement of claim this week against Capital Health, the QEII Health Sciences Centre and various officials in connection within her four-year battle to win back her hospital privileges makes for fascinating reading.
Although the allegations -- as we say in the trade -- have not been proven in court, they raise troubling questions.
Most importantly, why did Capital Health make what should have been at most a few-week process a four-year marathon that led to September’s predictable decision that it should never have messed with her privileges in the first place.
If its ongoing decisions were based on poor legal advice -- by some estimates, legal fees have sucked more than a million badly needed dollars out of the health care system since 2002 -- whose responsibility should those fees be?
Just asking.
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Stephen Kimber, the Maclean Hunter Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College, is the author of five nonfiction books and a novel.
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STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and eight non-fiction books.