F - 35 Double Insult

F - 35 Double Insult                                                                      

The procurement of 65 F-35 Lightning 2 aircraft from Lockheed Martin is degrading to Canada, exemplifying a larger situation. It reminds of Harper’s dubious purchase of mortgage securities to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars from the Canadian banks, another bankrupting expenditure that is defying the common sense and public language of Canada.

With interest have I read “The New Solitudes” in the March issue of the Walrus magazine, as I was already compiling some thoughts on a piece about Canada’s crisis of democracy. Erna Paris did steal some thunder of my thinking but there still is an untold story.

In the essay “The New Solitudes” Erna Paris describes the take over of Canada and descent into ideological polarization against the backdrop of a list of identity nurturing values such as humanist and social ones. They were shown as part of a broader, lateral display of traits that supposedly came into being after WW2. Not quite true, she brings up a popular misconception that has a bearing on major controversies like the one about the F-35. Perhaps these Canadian characteristics are rather an outflow of a pre-existing identity that emerged from the way of life in a very small population in Nouvelle France that had became expert in diplomatic, economic and military survival. Intermarriage and cultural exchange with aboriginal people had coalesced into a unique Western awakening from medieval European stupor.

Somewhat loosely following from there, the war of 1812, the Mackenzie Papineau rebellion and a few other things converged essentially into non violent foundations of community collaboration and statehood that were laid down by Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine. Between 1840 - 1848 they formed Canadian governments, clearing the way for confederation. Unlike today’s elites they had inherited an older public language, as a common language as well as a scholarly language.

The particular Canadian historic groove surfaced in the coming about of a tradition of world class historians, science and political figures who shaped much of the positive action and positive possibilities of the world around us.

Margaret McMillan explained the origin of today’s world structures and conflicts in “Paris 1919, Six Months that changed the World”.

Karl Polanyi who wrote “The Great Transformation, The Political and Economic Origins of our Time” is widely credited as the man who put the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith back on his feet. It is immensely important in an age of neoliberal junk economics that had bastardized the honourable Adam Smith to their hearts content.

Harold Innis before Marshall McLuhan in “The Bias of Communication” foresaw an electronic communications revolution.

Long before Tommy Douglas became father of Medicare during Treaty 6 negotiations at Fort Carlton, Duck Lake and Fort Pitt in 1876 Cree chief Poundmaker together with other chiefs had insisted to make the first public Medicare provisions part of this Canadian legal document.

Lester Pearson as Prime Minister of two minority governments introduced Medicare on a national level, and had already been instrumental in the founding of the United Nations and in the establishment of the UN Security Council.

Half a century ago Avro Canada engineers designed and build a fighter interceptor aircraft, the Avro Arrow, that had a greater flight envelope than the F-35 ever will have.

There really is a memory component in the Canadian mind of which an element is military history and here we meet the F-35 fighter/bomber procurement again.

We backtrack for a moment and understand the whole idea of modern military capability is based on air superiority. There is no air superiority, no protective umbrella for peace keeping missions for example, without air superiority fighter aircraft capability. In this regard the governments of Australia and the Netherlands share growing international concerns over the capabilities of the F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft. It was vocalized in a leaked evaluation of the RAND corporation (originally founded by the US Airforce) following war games where the F-35 was outclassed by the Sukhoi Su-35 as well as a version of the Chinese Chengdu fighter series.

This capability study of the F-35 Lightning 2 aircraft was summarized by former US Air force officer and Rand researcher John Stillion with the following assessment: ”cant turn, can’t climb, can’t run”. The Australian government paid attention.

Its a not to be repeated lesson the US Air force learned in Vietnam where a small number of air superior MIG 21s flew circles around them and shot down US aircraft in unexpected numbers.

Exclusive reliance on fighting in The Beyond Visual Range Regime that supposedly allowed to give up quick maneuverability and close range cannon fire was eventually abandoned with the MIG21 reality asserting itself. As a consequence air superiority fighters like the F-15 were built, fighter pilots were retrained which inspired the “Top Gun” movie and the problem was fixed; for a while. Today more than ever air to air rocketry failure is never more than one cheap new electronic decoy or heat seeking, radar guidance deflecting gimmick away.

In a security outlook where the International Energy Agency expects nuclear weapons proliferation to 20 or even 30 countries by 2025 – 2030 focused conventional defence abilities to undercut almost inevitable nuclear antics, errors and reflexes matter.

One might ask what is the point, why employ ineffectual equipment limitations and tactics? Why want a fighter aircraft that on somebody’s paper has all kinds of multi purpose characteristics but is inferior in air to air combat?

For government lobbyists and financial speculators who look past the real estate bubble this is one more new opportunity. Following the F-35 cost overrun concerns of the US Air Force and the US Air Force Association that are shared by former US government official and defence analyst Winslow Wheeler, internationally the F-35 project is expected to take on a financing volume past the trillion dollar mark. It also means our government is dramatically low balling its cost estimates. Partly for the cost reason the US Navy is considering to buy F-18s instead.

Like with other over sophisticated so called stealth aircraft the mission capability rate of the F-35 will be about 55% only. Stretching our air defences so thin once the F-18 fleet is decommissioned means that asserting arctic sovereignty can become one more future liability of the F-35 which will likely result in even more aircraft purchases.

The response of the Canadian people is going to be particularly comprehensive because of our awareness that weapons and tactics play a role, are structural tools in military and civilian politics.

Therefore a costly lemon is not only unaffordable its outright dangerous.

Effective military operations that don’t stagnate and escalate into mass slaughter always required an element of democracy, a form of power sharing and communication between the ones that have rank and authority with the ones who carry out action in the field or in the air or on the water. In WW1 it was Arthur Currie who insisted to lead the Canadian army onto Vimy Ridge based on these principles. He had to overcome political resistance because priorities in favour of elitist award distribution regimes, a trend towards aristocratic ivory tower politics and power grabs don’t welcome the idea of field officers, pilots and artillery hands calling some of the shots. This is true then as now.

Political, economic and military elites tend to like mathematically abstract dimensions, exemplified in a puppy love for very vulnerable, fragile tools such as attack helicopters and other so called multi-purpose aircraft like the F-35 Lightning 2. These have a universal, quasi naive Swiss army knife like planning appeal for the technocrats who don’t want to ask questions, or listen to what fits where, or collaborate or share thoughts with just anybody.

For Stephen Harper who was inundated with underhanded class thinking and disrespect for our constitutional conventions by political science professor Tom Flanagan through years of mentorship in Calgary it makes sense to attack us in our military legacy; nobody would be suspicious. However, the military dimension in Canada is not a playground for bullies, its somewhat low key, deeply rooted in our minds but not talked about everyday in postmodern realities. Harper seems to over estimate the so so stealth capabilities of the F-35 and assume its attack on us will fly under the radar and will take out his longstanding list of Canadian targets topped by Medicare. Since his days with the Canadian Taxpayer Federation he had been searching for a clever way to cut out our hearts to which closely we keep Medicare. Not only does the F-35 procurement weaken the integrity of our military ethics it bankrupts Canada by giving free reign to the despot with toxic leadership. The insult of the useless F-35 to militarily expose us and economically impoverish us for a generation no Canadian will forgive.

Yukon Energy Perspectives

Yukon Energy Perspectives 

Yukon Energy Corporation hosted a comprehensive, broad public energy consultation and ‘teach in’ back in March. The process is continued with a series of events, each dedicated to a particular subject such as biomass power plants, Liquid Natural Gas etc.

There is a reasonably widespread understanding that within less than half a decade we need to add a little less of half on top of the electrical energy that is generated now. For some the gravity of it goes in one ear and out the other while there are also people who take the impacts of a possible shortfall seriously. Nothing materializes without an intact flow of energy, not food, not education, not transportation, nor livelihood or housing. The most dramatic push for power generation growth of any jurisdiction I can think of is here now. Residential use makes up about one third and industrial uses about two thirds of the projected demand increase.

YEC president David Morrison informed the attendants of last week’s biomass energy workshop that the planning work is carried out with a priority mandate for renewable technology as much as possible. 

One of the tentative YEC proposals aims at a wind farm project on Ferry Hill that could provide close to a quarter of the required annual energy increase, under 10 percent of total needs.  
This is well within a typical grid tolerance to make adjustments for the fluctuating wind power characteristic. Also there will be good winter performance when hydro output is reduced. After years of pilot work with the Haeckel Hill turbines Ferry Hill would be an important step for affordable Yukon sourced power. Spin offs of especially such a wind perspective would include an incentive to engineer for better grid stability and efficiency overall. It could include an up to date policy that allows citizens, electrical truck and car owners with bi-directional charge set ups and generally Independent Power Providers to sell energy back to the grid when it has demand.

A tentative proposal by YEC for a substantial biomass plant power generation generated a lively discussion at the dedicated workshop among the community stakeholders. A few smaller and pilot plants would spread jobs and other development benefits across the territory. Such a limited scope would require to make use of heat for buildings or greenhouses co-generated with electricity to achieve economically viable kWh cost. Midsize plants of a capacity that is sufficient for one unit to match the future Whistle Bend draw or allow to bring a new mine online can have a high efficiency just generating electricity. The significance of the Yukon Energy Corporation’s wood biomass proposal is that in combination with a Ferry Hill wind farm it offers a way out of alternative natural gas development at Eagle Plain. And it does so at competitive cost and with more realistic time frames when compared with larger geo-thermal or new hydro projects while similarly approaching a carbon neutral standard.


By comparison with many US jurisdictions, for example, it is fortunate that Yukon biomass power potential can compensate for the failure to not have developed over time sufficient non hydro renewable energy avenues. It’s been two generations of inaction in terms of a diverse energy industry since the 1973 oil shock got people worried for the first time. 
But the ongoing monolithic energy context of hydro and fossil fuel energy had not exactly been thought stimulating. From there, with some huffing and puffing, it appears that in Yukon a meaningful energy dialogue is narrowing between wood biomass and natural gas development options. 

The conversation in our community has just begun to explore some of the involved questions.

One is about how much of fire killed, beetle killed, highway maintenance/fire smart sourced fuel wood can be sustainably utilized. ‘Dead’ wood inhabits much of the boreal life and life cycle and much of it needs to stay right there. With this in mind stringent sustainability standards in a Northern boreal environment in Scandinavian jurisdictions are met with extraction intensities greater in orders of magnitude than what is considered here. Change in Yukon forestry practices towards selective use, well adapted and scaled equipment and away from clearing sections and soil disruption and compression is overdue anyways. Then because of a respectful vision, Yukon trees do grow back.
However, there are a few more real incentives to think it through and adapt annual allowable cuts and land use plans toward this end. This will happen when the alternative of natural gas development and natural gas power plants is considered a bit more comprehensively.

Natural gas consists mostly of methane, over 20 years or even 50 years it creates several times the diesel equivalency of global warming impact. With the adoption of such a relentless fossil fuel vision Yukon looses its standing in climate negotiations. The idea of ‘clean’ natural gas originated from valid concerns about a range of air pollutants that are higher in gasoline, diesel or coal combustion.
Natural gas greenhouse impact is a different matter and undergoes a profound change in perception as we speak. A natural gas branch land industry requiring big capital equipment expenses from us would stay for generations. The calculation that one could protract the methane break down of the natural gas emissions over a century, and then end up with a similar or slightly smaller green house effect when compared to diesel and gasoline is wrong. In fact it denies already expanding troubles like permafrost thawing or ocean acidification. Events that are tied into feed back loops which are derailing in response to green house emissions through the next five to fifteen years.
Possibly even federal transfer payments could be affected if Yukon gives up a sense of self preservation in the climate and energy conversation. 
Further, the development of LNG export to Southern markets could needlessly undermine local energy security as under existing rules of proportional energy sharing Canada cannot retreat from energy export levels to the US which under stress take preference over domestic needs.
As temporary fuel supplement for existing diesel plants, LNG from existing Southern sources can have a useful purpose.

The core of Yukon’s energy infrastructure are public assets that like roads and highways are understood as part of the commons. This understanding has geographical and practical limitations in reaching 100 percent of the community but in principal everybody has access. The commons concept not only connects Indigenous, European, Asian and other heritage roots but from it common good and ecological responsibility extend. The contention by some who are not happy with existing mining oversight and permitting procedures such as YESAB, who don’t want to extend energy infrastructure to new mines by way of quasi alternative or alienated regulation, breaks this bond. More helpful will be to ask for an energy dedicated green fund contribution from large scale users who’s life span is too short to compensate the public for the related capital equipment burden. 

Pipe Dreams -- Feds take over

Pipe Dreams -- Feds take over

Last week the federal government announced that from now on the Northern Pipeline Agency in Ottawa is exclusively in charge of all things Alaska Gas Pipeline in Yukon. Comments, concerns are to be addressed to them and everybody else in their concern or mandate regarding the pipeline might as well go home. That includes the Yukon Government, First Nation Governments, Yukon Environmental Assessment Board, Aboriginal Pipeline Coalition and Yukon Energy Corporation, to name a few.

A stunning turn of events that knocks the wind out everybody, the community seems speechless. Well almost everybody, executive orders of this kind, I thought, were foreshadowed in the June 2009 TransCanada Pipelines/Exxon Mobile partnership agreement. Almost immediately I had undertaken an effort to scrutinize the deal and my findings were published in the Whitehorse Star in the same month.

In a nutshell TransCanada needed Exxon as an American partner to plow through some of the Canadian realities on the ground that I listed above. Reason being that a very effective tool to override lawful government and its legislation, NAFTA chapter 11 can only be levied across international borders and address a federal or national government.

In the Abitibi Bowater chapter 11 case foreign claim on ownership of Canadian bulk water was agreed upon and settled by Canada with $ 130 000 000.00 in August 2010; one of the larger NAFTA chapter 11 settlements or penalties. 

Rather than paying up arbitration panel penalties or settlements and then go collecting, in that case to NewFoundland and Labrador, the federal government now acted preemptively to control everything under their own roof through the Northern Pipeline Agency in Ottawa. In this way it can add the chapter 11 pressure into the sausage making, or should I say pipeline, already on a threat level and continue to keep a lid on the publicity of NAFTA stories.

However, these kind of totalitarian implications of “Fossil Fuel Extreme” on the depletion leg of its reserve use curve don’t arrive quite accidentally in Yukon. Renewable non hydro development is weak and with that community resilience against such political take over attempts. Didn’t we have government devolution? Ottawa’s orders couldn’t have come with a worse timing taking the momentum away of what renewable and democratic energy initiative we do have.

There are other problems that make us vulnerable to the climate crime of these new natural gas developments of the Eagle Plain reserves and the Alaska Gas Pipeline. On the outcome the methane emissions through one generation’s time will have several times the global warming impact of even equivalent diesel or gasoline emissions. New natural gas development scenarios are only possible because there is more reality denial, more separation from our life circumstances than just sticking the head in the sand of the climate crisis.

Critics of greenhouse emissions typically bring forth arguments with a perhaps unintentional but very effective counter-gang dynamic. It means to end up acting as phony opposition that underneath of stated ecological concerns supports what it criticizes, but also counters constructive alternatives.

Worth mentioning are beliefs in the fantasy of climate conferences and related emission trade and carbon tax schemes. Global Thinking and Local Postponing involves pretending the climate problem is one of legal or administrative standards, such as banning land mines or supporting children’s rights to an education and how to go about it. The replacement of the biggest monolithic infrastructure hardware that ever existed, the fossil fuel energy behemoth, with renewable energy technologies is fundamentally different. No new technology, like computers or trains for example, was ever introduced by conferences or introduction quota. If players like countries or corporations in the emissions trade schemes exceed minimum contributions they sell credit to under achievers. The claim of aiming beyond minima is false because a lowest common denominator standard below a ceiling is incentivized. In fact profits in emission trade derivative speculation depend on blocking renewable energy. Rating agencies of a kind that is well known since the financial melt down in 2008 assign carbon credits to activities like rain forest devastation in Indonesia. This country with little industries but giant slash burns is now the third largest green house gas emitter after the US and China. 

Incentivizing green house emissions and blocking renewable energy development is also true for the carbon tax idea. It can be collected from people as long as they are not allowed to sell renewable energy to the grid or access fast charge outlets for plug in hybrid or electric cars.

On the other hand good things happen very quickly in close to 50 countries and jurisdictions, rich and poor, that have quietly enacted renewable energy legislation for the purpose of creating energy markets. Quietly, as not to attract friction with so called ‘trade’ agreements. Its a logical process because the fossil and nuclear energy sectors have become freeloaders in terms of free use of public infrastructures such as global military protections, huge cash handouts that serve no real R & D purposes and externalized destruction costs exceeding the wealth of nations. This will not change over night but measures like legalizing grid access for renewables, local fleet procurement of electric vehicles etc. levels the marketplace somewhat. The fossil fuel industry has the financial security of a two centuries contract, give the renewable providers a contract for a few years. The effects are dramatic, in China wind power grew thirty fold in four years, much faster than planned after renewable energy legislation was passed in 2005. A similar process is underway in Ontario, in Brazil in 2011 wind energy became for the first time cheaper than fossil energy based on conventional, non inclusive calculation.

So what is the problem? 

A growing climate denial drum beat in North America is only part of an even broader intellectual illness that has locked itself into the abstract theory of neoliberal economics which is joined at the hip to the fossil fuel dogma. It is a warlike thought structure and it does create a climate of conformism. Part of this orthodoxy is to observe taboos like the one that forbids to mention anti-democratically enacted protectionism like NAFTA chapter 6 which restricts Canada’s freedom to trade energy.

The controversial spectre of natural gas fracturing in Yukon gains momentum. Nobody introduced a meaningful problem frame that would include the incomparably heavy climate impact of natural gas emissions in general. Or the need for solidarity and dialogue with poor countries who are being injured with the implied distortion of renewable energy as economic burden. Or that the Eagle Plain development in conjunction with the Alaska Gas Pipeline, the latter seems to be okayed now between Washington and Ottawa, could suck us dry so fast we would not know what hit us. Nobody pointed out that North Slope gas aside, six trillion cubic feet from Eagle Plain could supply the Alaska pipeline for five to six years while all our own energy security considerations may have been stopped or sidelined. It’s worth mentioning because gas reserves, conventional or shale, go empty much, much faster than projected these days. Look at the Barnett Shale disappointment in Texas.

The Dark Side of abandoning the Sternwheeler Logo (2011)

There is grassroots discontent mounting against having a so-called rebranding of our lovely town forced down our throats, especially against losing the sternwheeler symbol.

No convincing case has been made by Mayor Bev Buckway and council as to why Whitehorse would need an identity remake except that there may, perhaps, be a disturbing motivation crossing over from the dark side of politics, intentionally or not.

Not just at the hands of the current city council, Whitehorse already has experienced a sustained period of heritage destruction as well as of economic and ecological sustainability.

Lists of antidemocratic measures and anecdotes tend to be incomplete and just keep getting longer.

Landmarks and characteristics that provided identity to the community have been eradicated, like the old post office or the “Whiskey Flats” flair.

Many local businesses, some with family traditions, have been broken up and good jobs have been destroyed as a result of the city subsidizing and initiating the Walmart operation in collaboration with the Yukon government.

Whitehorse is the historical hub of Yukon River navigation, and the shipyards, where sternwheelers were built or refitted, was one point of interest.

Yukon steam shipping was one of the most demanding and accomplished operations of its kind. The sternwheeler logo represents a sprit of industrial and transportation ingenuity that is crucial to remember with regard to the green energy and green transportation challenge that is on us now.

As a more recent novelty, council is taking the fight to the statutes itself of civic and democratic traditions; violations of the municipalities act have been noted in the Yukon legislature.

There was the stonewalling of the McLean Lake referendum paired with frivolous public litigation expenditures.

In a vote on an improvement project that the city took from Black Street homeowners, nonparticipating parties were considered in favour of the city plans, actually tipping the count by rigging the process in this way.

I wonder what is in store for our city and territory if council gets away with this new fanatical campaign of changing the way we see our community.

Outside of the city’s phony survey activity, it seems impossible to find a single person, not just in Whitehorse but in all of the Yukon, who supports getting rid of the sternwheeler.

Some people may have selfish reasons, like not wanting to see harm to Yukon tourism or other business activities that could come from the so-called rebranding, which is a campaign to disintegrate our image.

Totalitarian governance has often sought this kind of intimidation through psychological identity shock to break resistance. Examples are the display of abstract reductionist features of a leader’s face or other new-age heralding stimuli meant to manipulate the citizens when cynically adding to or removing symbols from flags, coats of arms, and such.

This is why people feel sick about the loss of the sternwheeler in our logo.

We don’t want to keep losing more of our democratic and community roots that a spineless council and city administration is attacking.

about: “The North: use it, or loose it in 2010”

Mr. Streicker, your vision for the North needs work

You correctly point out “use it or loose it” (Star, 8 Jan. 2010), and further that reference to the traditional and ongoing presence of Inuit, First Nations and other Canadians provides more legitimacy than Harper sending gunboats. 
You say our land is not in dispute but some of our water is.
To say "none of Canada’s land is in dispute" and not to transcend this discussion of shorelines is missing the point.
Despite some disagreement Harper says the same thing and no, the statement is not helpful to hold up the integrity of Canada’s territory. Canada consists of land, air and water, rivers, lakes, saltwater zones, wetlands, ice or fluid, winter or summer. Catharine McClellan said it best “Part of the Land Part of the Water”.
It's not semantics John, it's a reflection of who we are below the illusions of old and new empire projections. You missed the defining issue that water joins land together, an indigenous experience inseparably connected to Canadian territories which is as different to European legalities as Canadian Constitutional Conventionality as a whole.
Water bodies are engrained in our evolution as the highways and communication lines of the country, as much focus of the land as arteries are to a living organism. 
One has to take this Northern, this Canadian reality to the international stage more than superficially. Not the Dutch or Russian or Denish tradition of ‘owning land and firing cannon balls over water’ (inspired by J.R. Saul on the law of the sea legacy), which is clearly an understanding of water as fence. One navigates along fences, a view that legitimizes foreign icebreakers, submarines and other vessels to go where they please without asking already. The shoreline discussion doesn't work in Canada or for Canada and it's not a credible or effective direction for us to take. 
However Harper’s and your’s sentimental views lack not just knowledge and effectiveness, but also a genuine will to stop a comeback of colonialism in Canada. Harper pursues the wrongheadedness aggressively and you do it with quiet adherence. Of course one cannot treat Indigenous Canadians as second class citizens by way of class justice, treaty erosion and a race profiled drug prohibition war and hold up credibly the Indigenous Canadian narrative against foreign interests in the Canadian arctic; both at the same time, no way.

Half-cooked TILMA (2007)

The Yukon government wants (wanted) to sign on to the BC/Alberta Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement. I would like to support the ongoing discussion about TILMA in the Yukon with seven observations.

1. There was no participation in the negotiations, no input from the Yukon.
Long lists of items that may harm private and public sectors as well as communities in the Yukon have been cited. The concept of transferring large areas of government authority to TILMA dispute resolution panels, who are not elected, could be illegal.

2. Governments and organizations that deal with professional standards consult, with or without signing on to TILMA, regarding harmonization of job qualifications. TILMA creates more bureaucratic layers that any process of change is then forced to work through and it would not be surprising if it would make the labour shortage worse. 39 pages of terrible reading, a somewhat untypical legal document with a lot of simplistic platitudes that really don't address anything. Its so much easier to break things than to make things. There is no incentive in TILMA to produce anything positive, there are no accountability tools in it. However it is designed to stick like cancer cells. Article 20: Accession and Withdrawal spells out a notice of cancellation period that is twice as long as in NAFTA.
The Conference Board of Canada was a primary lobbyist in favour of TILMA but doesn't have the numbers to prove anything. Away from their TILMA papers they themselves in their own current, economic forecasts for BC and Alberta do not predict the slightest growth based on TILMA, but work along the lines of previous years.

3.  BC and Alberta parliaments have voted on TILMA, there were no community consultations which is unusual for a sweeping legislation. Only after the fact, simultaneously with the implementation phase, which is now, have a range of BC municipalities had the opportunity of passing resolutions against TILMA.
Aspects like improving the labour mobility are elements of a false language that is meant to hide troublesome facts real people are left to struggle with.

4.  Negative effects are and were being felt in BC communities before implementation. School boards already have refrained from removing vending machines with harmful foods fearing future TILMA litigation. These school boards have a very real concern. Different to NAFTA there is no burden of proof to describe the damage one claims to have suffered. TILMA is different in its ability to supersede any civic structures arbitrarily simply through pitching the categories of irrational market fundamentalism versus the common good. TILMA is bound to breed an unheard of level of inflation in the litigation industry. Not only will this negatively effect the bringing up of healthy children in schools, it is clearly introducing many new disadvantages to the typically smaller businesses who produce and manufacture healthy foods. Its an element of a command economy, a government manipulation of the market on behalf of manufacturers for sugar and chemical saturated soft drinks and other useless stuff that cannot compete on its own merit. The agribusiness and food giants run a big part of their "business" out of vast legal departments. These lobbyists have a permanent foot in the door of governments and work against food safety, against meat inspections etc. It doesn't appear to be healthy to further strengthen these shadowy and excessively bureaucratic schemes. This type of market interference has nothing to do with the kind of conventional market regulations for infrastructure and social security purposes, a context in which stable markets evolved since the Great Depression. My concern is that the BC/Alberta trend towards a modern form of aristocratic domination will in the long term weaken the entrepreneurial economy that people rely on to survive.

5.  "Appendix 1 - Regulatory Bodies with established Dispute Resolution Procedures",
as the only appendix exhausts itself in three lines below the aforementioned headline that states:
"British Columbia Utilities Commission
British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission
Alberta Energy Utilities Board"
That means no business that suffers through the protectionism and subventions by the Alberta or Federal Governments in the tar sands will be allowed to apply for the assembly of a TILMA dispute resolution panel. An extraordinary and solitary exception. This really is aristocratic, class justice, no false language in the straightforward Appendix 1. The tar sands industry is permamently protected within TILMA but not subject to TILMA actions. This is exposing the entire TILMA as very phoney because it is in violation of its own omnipotent definitions. The tar sands conglomerat doesn't want to get mixed up in the expected turmoil caused by the anti democratic TILMA sweep. Different to Wal-Mart and Monsanto, Suncor and the Alberta Energy Utilities Board cannot become more protectionist than they already are. The protection within TILMA might over time increase the precedence weight favouring the tar sands conglomerate in their numerous legal situations outside of TILMA, why should that become the Yukon's dirty business?
The Appendix of the document is most permanent, its set apart from the list of exceptions which are temporary to various degrees.

6. "Article 22: Further Co-operation", in its second paragraph is quoted here complete because it determines the direction of the agreement:
" 2. Parties shall continue to jointly advocate for the removal of any Federal Government measures that operate to restrict, impair or distort trade, investment and labour mobility between the parties."
Article 22 effectively renders every exception temporary, which also means the agreement provides the power to nullify land claims in the Yukon. It might not happen, but unbelievably so, under TILMA it could happen. Remember, different to NAFTA, TILMA does not put a burden of proof on the applicant, whether government entities or other parties. As it once was in the Inquisition trials, it can then be sufficient to project an accusation with the goal of obtaining a final ruling. Canada Council for the Arts, the National film Board, public broadcasters, medicare and public schools could over time be abolished, many things that we hold dear could disappear.

7. I refuse to believe the Yukon Government has the mindset of Gordon Campbell and Ralph Klein who signed TILMA, or shares their intentions in the most destructive areas. Its enough if the YG lawyers don't read the information.
TILMA comes along as a real bastard, no matter how one looks at it there is absolutely nothing on it that says Yukon.

Harper’s Crime Wars generate Crime

Its a tradition of bankrupt politicians to deflect by lashing out against crime, as if this problem was not better taken care off by reason than by impulse.
The US justice has started to retreat from an excessive penal code against young offenders because it damaged trust into police and courts and hurt public safety. Harper wants to make Canada the only G7 country without an effective youth court. There are almost no examples for such a policy in Western countries. One that I could find was the Third Reich which abandoned the youth court during WW2 in 1944.
The bedrock of justice history and 800 years of justice reform is that crime deterrence depends on equality in court and balanced dignity of the court. Contrary to hearsay the severity of sentences has nothing to do with crime deterrence. The crucial respect for the courts is tied to the independence of justice as third pillar of the representative system, keeping government and parliament honest. Its a watchdog function without which democracy cannot stand. A control function that Harper wants to get rid of by diminishing the courts with a radical new way of legislating the court’s sentences. He does this together with corrupting the rules to appoint judges in the novel way of political appointments. Every person in every walk and place of life knows, every woman, man and child knows that the adherence to rules depends on them being equal for everybody. An excessive penal code propels the well to do to negotiate their way out, strike deals, come up with expensive lawyers. Crime deterrence is diminished as a result of a growing inequality in court; its that simple. And its already a problem, since Jean Chretien's times Canada’s young offender legislation is one of the toughest in the world. Lack of legal aid and lack of access of low income people to justice in Canada had caught the attention of the UN. Aboriginal women, to a significant degree teenagers, are locked up 30 times as often as non aboriginal women. Aboriginal and black youth are locked up longer than other Canadians for identical offenses, the stats are obvious. Jail populations in Canada are growing but have some way to go to the seven fold per capita level of incarceration in the US, but also to a US style organized crime culture that is bred in the jails. Harper’s utilization of the vengeance motive represents a shameless exploitation of the suffering of crime victims and a cynical disrespect for the safety of Canadian homes and on Canadian streets.
The Prime Minister’s behaviour is in keeping with his ambition to become an international outlaw and a very lonesome heir of a Bush Doctrine without Bush. Highlights are the breaking of the child soldier convention, violation of the convention against torture by the way of covering up extraordinary rendition flights, accommodation of war crime activities by Afghan authorities, warlords and other war allies (Because of this in the fall of 2007, level headed Canadian officers outright resisted orders and stopped to hand over prisoners to Afghan allies), promotion of capital punishment for Canadians at the hands of the US justice. All of these are violations of government’s obligations that may be dealt with in due time under Canadian law.