A CBC headline trumpeted, “Political advocacy group North99 uses misleading petitions to gather voter data”
But one of the two founders of north99 wrote an angry Facebook post denying misleading anyone, insisting CBC had made a mistake
“This morning CBC published a misleading and factually incorrect piece about North99. We have already filed an official complaint with the CBC and asked for a…
A CBC headline trumpeted, “Political advocacy group North99 uses misleading petitions to gather voter data”
But one of the two founders of north99 wrote an angry Facebook post denying misleading anyone, insisting CBC had made a mistake
“This morning CBC published a misleading and factually incorrect piece about North99. We have already filed an official complaint with the CBC and asked for a correction to be issued.
If you’ve read the piece and are wondering what’s true and what’s not, here’s the facts: people sign up to our email list through issue campaigns, surveys, petitions, and our newsletter. We always make it clear up front what issue or campaign people are joining when they sign up.The CBC claimed we were not being clear with people about this, and that we were signing them up for campaigns they didn’t want to be a part of. Let me be clear: this is 100% untrue. It’s as untrue as saying the sky is green. Their so-called “analysis” of the forms on our website was wrong, and this led them to report a falsehood. That’s unfortunate, and we hope they will correct this embrassing error. Canadians deserve the unvarnished truth from our public broadcaster.
But you know who doesn’t give a damn about the truth? The Conservatives. And they have already seized on the mistakes made by the CBC to attack us and the North99 community.
This morning Lisa Raitt — a former Harper Cabinet Minister and the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party — took to Twitter to attack North99. She made wild allegations about us — the sort of stuff you’d expect from The Rebel, not someone trying to lead the country.Look, none of this is surprising. Our community is disrupting politics in this country, and we have to expect the forces of the right and the status-quo to come after us with everyone they’ve got. Now that we are growing in size and our community is having an impact, people are going to try to tear us down. Lisa Raitt won’t be the last politician to smear and slander us. They hate what we stand for. But you know what: we aren’t going to back down from a fight.
Here’s my commitment to you:
1) We take your trust seriously, and we take accuracy seriously. We won’t always be perfect, and sometimes — like the CBC! — we’ll make mistakes. But we’ll always correct them and be honest with you.
2) We will never stop fighting for a Canada that works for the many, not just the richest few — even when we’re attacked by powerful politicians like Lisa Raitt. As long as you’re with us, we’ll keep on working.If you ever want to get in touch with questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to send an email to priority@north99.org.
Thanks for your support,
Taylor
Co-Founder, North99
https://www.facebook.com/OntarioVotesToStopDougFord/posts/514137532666333
Perhaps most interesting is how deftly Mr Scollon this message of righteous indignation was transformed into a Conservative attack piece.
While I don’t know the truth of the misleading petition allegation, it is nonetheless clear that the two gentlemen who are behind North99 are indeed Liberals.
A quick internet search revealed that Taylor Scollon had been the U of T Liberals’ communications director
https://www.facebook.com/uoftliberal/posts/taylor-scollon-uoft-liberals-communications-director-reminds-us-its-the-economy-/396372270425866/
and cofounder Geoff Sharpe had been the President of the BC Young Liberals
https://web.archive.org/web/20170728231036/http://abacusinsider.com/canadian-millennials/interview-geoff-sharpe-consultant-navigator-canadian-millennial-watch/
But are they operating with the blessing of theLiberal Party of Canada or are they acting alone in support of it. Presumably North 99 is a third party advertiser in this, the new “Pre-Election Period” devised by the latter, else they’ll fall afoul of the LPC’s own new law which lays down rules about third party advertisers and possible collusion with political parties.
The WRONG KIND OF GREEN writes:
“While it shouldn’t be surprising that online partisan front groups stir the pot, what is remarkable is how effective they have been with so little accountability. All of these groups are scooping up massive amounts of data, often directly collecting information through their own cynical petitions on hot issues. These groups show how empty much of the political landscape has become. Digital media strategists are running a shell game that treats ordinary working people as something to be manipulated and toyed with. Forget about all that nonsense about Russians on distorting democracy through social media. We need to look no further than the communication specialists and political parties in this country to see who the true manipulators are.”
The WRONG KIND OF GREEN article NAVIGATING ONTARIO’S ONLINE POLITICAL FRONT GROUPS looks at North99 and Ontario Proud, and who is behind them. Yet the closest WRONG KIND OF GREEN gets to revealing who is behind *it* is characterizing itsellf as “a 100% volunteer, critical-thinking collective.”
Whoever WRONG KIND OF GREEN is, I share their concern about who is driving our politics. Both North99 and Ontario Proud are working to build an us against them political culture that polarizes Canadians, and certainly seems to impose undue influence on our electoral process by demonizing the other side’s politicians.
This is, of course, why we still have the atrocious First Past The Post voting system. Attacking the enemy is a time honoured strategy that often leads to winning elections and becoming the winner who takes all in our majoritan political system.
The Liberals and Conservatives take turns getting elected by convincing their base and any swing voters they can woo that only they will save us from the other.
But what is it doing to our country?
This is another in a series of advertisements by Sugar Information, Incorporated. I’ve posted two or three, I’ll get the others up eventually.
Yikes!
[guest post by Stand.Earth]
The Canadian federal government’s announcement reapproving the Trans Mountain Pipeline is inconsistent with the government’s declaration of a climate emergency the day before. This will likely lead to more legal challenges and protests that will continue to delay and block the controversial project, said international environmental organization Stand.earth.
“Approving the Trans Mountain Pipeline is inconsistent with our government’s declaration of a climate emergency. Oil and gas emissions are the largest and fastest growing component of Canada’s emissions. If we are going to fight climate change in Canada, we need to face the fact that we can no longer expand fossil fuel production and infrastructure. Canada’s oil is high cost and high carbon, and it is struggling to compete in a global market. Investing pipeline profits into clean energy? How about you just put the $10 billion directly into clean energy, instead of wasting taxpayer money on this risky investment?” said Tzeporah Berman, International Program Director at Stand.earth. “We stand by city leaders, the B.C. government, and First Nations who oppose this project, and we call on organizations and individuals around the world to stand with us.”
“No matter who forms the next government in Ottawa, the Trans Mountain Pipeline will never be built,” said said Sven Biggs, Climate and Energy Campaigner at Stand.earth. “People care deeply about protecting the BC coast, and British Columbians remain opposed to this pipeline and the risks of a devastating oil spill that come with it. Whenever construction resumes, another wave of protests is guaranteed in British Columbia.”
Pipeline opposition
Opposition to the pipeline remains strong, with tens of thousands of people pledging to stop the pipeline and multiple cities, municipalities, and the province of B.C. also stating opposition.
Project risks
Construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and the likelihood of a spill associated with the project poses significant risks to the climate, the public safety of the communities it passes through, the economy, and the critically endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales.
Republished from Tzeporah Berman: Approving the Trans Mountain Pipeline is inconsistent with Canada’s declaration of a climate emergency
Image Credits
White Rock, BC – Coast Salish housepost and Haida totem pole © by Joe Mabel is licensed to share under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Oil Flag of Canada © by Laurel Russwurm photographed at Jobs.Justice.Climate 2015 Toronto is licensed to share under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
#FridaysForFuture Save Orcas © by Laurel Russwurm, photographed at #FridaysForFuture Waterloo (2019) is licensed to share under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
by Andrew Woolford, University of Manitoba
When the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report, it described the ongoing violence as a Canadian genocide. In the aftermath of the report’s release, many public intellectuals and journalists in Canadian news outlets and others on social media have contested the use of the term genocide.
I am a genocide scholar who has written widely about settler colonial genocide.
Genocide, originally defined near the end of the Second World War in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin and consequently taken up by sociologists, historians, lawyers and others, is for Lemkin “a co-ordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”
As a sociologist, I’m not interested in adjudicating this case according to an official legal definition of genocide. Rigid legal concepts can interfere with understanding the social nature of group destruction. It can flatten the analysis of group relations. It can serve as a hammer to pound a complicated history into a singular event.
One genocide is never the same as another, and therefore a static law or a fixed concept of genocide is of little use to protect us from its horrors. Understanding genocide as a process can help Canadians grapple with the ongoing threat faced by Indigenous peoples in Canada and Indigenous women and girls as outlined in the final MMIWG report.
Legal professionals over time have had to adjust their reading of genocide law. Since the Second World War, contesting ideas and debate have brought about changes to how legal scholars and courts interpret genocide. The authors of the genocide supplement for the MMIWG report draw upon these interpretations but also pose new challenges to the laws of genocide.
These questions are necessary because the history of settler colonialism in Canada includes a variety of efforts to remove, assimilate, starve and erase Indigenous nations. When one approach failed, the settler colonial mesh recalibrated.
For example, residential schools mutated into child removals and mass incarceration. Moreover, the strands of the mesh continue to entrap and strangle communities long after the supposed end of any one manifestation of group destruction.
This is the destruction to which the report draws our attention.
The 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (UNGC) is the basis for both international and national laws on genocide. The law is the product of a socio-political moment. In the meetings leading up to the convention on genocide, delegates from colonial nations such as South Africa, Canada, the U.S., Sweden and New Zealand voted against inclusion of cultural genocide (Article III) in the genocide convention..
Colonial and masculine assumptions are evident in genocide law, as is the political will of the drafting parties to protect their own nations from accusations of genocide, hence the withdrawal of Article III from the final document.
Despite these beginnings, the law develops as people engage with it, and genocide case law has gradually addressed some of the limitations of the UNGC.
For example, through decisions from bodies such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the groups protected from genocide have been expanded beyond narrow understandings of ethnicity, nationhood, religion and race.
As well, the social death caused by mass rape has been interpreted as genocidal.
The MMIWG final report seeks to bring a grassroots, gendered and Indigenous reading of these laws to the discussion of MMIWG and how Canada’s actions and omissions contributed to their deaths.
This is a valuable contribution and pushes the boundaries of the definition of genocide. Thinking on this topic always needs to be pushed.
Genocide is a transgressive act. It overturns all expectations, violates social norms and continuously mutates to take on new and surprising forms. Different readings and interpretations of genocide are needed to truly confront the many evolving methods of group destruction.
Many genocide scholars view genocide as a process rather than an event. In my book, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States I focus on “cultural genocide,” though I treat cultural genocide as one technique of genocide rather than as a separate and distinct type.
I chart the development of Indigenous residential and boarding schools in North America and highlight the settler colonial practice of attempting to assimilate children through education.
Residential schools can be seen as situated within a series of nets that operated on all levels in society, including at the upper echelons of society among elite social influencers, and also through government and missionary institutions as well as individual teachers, principals and communities. There was a complex coordination of activities, habits, ideologies, motives and intents that were generally directed toward eliminating Indigenous peoples as distinct peoples.
These layers of destructive action can be likened to a settler colonial mesh constructed to entrap Indigenous peoples within an assimilative project. But the mesh is prone to snags and tears allowing for the emergence of resistance and subversion. Indigenous people were not passive; parents refused to send their children, children ran away and communities sometimes preserved their cultures when conditions allowed.
The MMIWG report is about the results of such processes and their effects on community and family relationships: harmful relations established through settler colonialism, their impact on intimate and everyday group relations and the possibility of better relations in the future.
It demands more of genocide law, and more from Canadian society, to address the intersecting settler colonial and hetero-patriarchal wrongs that have led to the injustice of MMIWG.
Rather than staunchly defend a narrow conception of genocide, it is time to demand this concept to do what it was intended to do: enable human thriving through respectful collective relations.
Andrew Woolford, Professor, University of Manitoba
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0) license.
Read the original article.
Here is what Sir John A. Macdonald did to Indigenous people:
I’m a Canadian settler. My paternal ancestors settled on Turtle island (aka North America) before Canadian Confederation.
Canadian government policies are continuing Canada’s Indigenous genocide today. It is *not* something in the past. It is something that needs to stop.
Now.
It is not going to stop so long as settlers continue being afraid to acknowledge it for what it is.
