Anne Marie Slaughter: Mind the Neighbours!

By Anne Marie Slaughter, Project Syndicate, from GPS website, April 18, 2012

Editor's Note: Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department (2009-2011), is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. For more from Slaughter, visit Project Syndicate or follow it on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Anne-Marie Slaughter.
The conventional wisdom last week on whether Syria would comply with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s ceasefire plan was that it was up to Russia. We were reverting to Cold War politics, in which the West was unwilling to use force and Russia was willing to keep arming and supporting its client. Thus, Russia held the trump card: the choice of how much pressure it was willing to put on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to comply with the plan.
If this view were correct, Iran would surely be holding an equally powerful hand. Annan, after all, traveled to Tehran as well. Traditional balance-of-power geopolitics, it seems, is alive and well.
But this is, at best, a partial view that obscures as much as it reveals. In particular, it misses the crucial and growing importance of regional politics and institutions.
A longer-term resolution of the Syrian crisis depends as much on Turkey and the Arab League as it does on the United States, Europe, and Russia. Consider what else happened last week: Turkey’s government made clear that it would turn to new measures if Annan’s plan does not produce results.
Turkish officials have been issuing similar proclamations for months, but now Syrian troops have fired into Turkey, chasing Free Syrian Army rebels who fled across the border, while the number of Syrian civilian refugees has increased sharply. Last week, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the stakes dramatically with talk of having “many options,” and by adding: “Also, NATO has responsibilities to do with Turkey’s borders, according to Article 5.”
Article 5 of the NATO treaty stipulates that an attack on one NATO member is to be considered an attack on all, and that all will come to the member’s aid. Of course, other NATO members could disagree that Syria has in fact attacked Turkey, but if Turkey were to invoke Article 5, a refusal to offer assistance could have unpleasant consequences for the alliance as a whole. And Assad knows full well that it will be impossible to avoid further border incidents unless he is prepared to allow the Free Syrian Army to use Turkey as a safe zone.
The significance of Article 5 is that if a credible case can be made that Turkey and its allies are acting in self-defense, they do not need to seek the UN Security Council’s approval. That makes Erdoğan’s suggestion a game-changer, forcing Assad to reckon with the prospect of a de facto militarily-enforced safe zone for the civilian opposition.
The deeper point here is that regional organizations, including NATO, provide the first level of legality and legitimacy required for a successful use of force. The US would not have supported intervention in Libya if the Arab League had not supported a no-fly zone and been willing to go to the UN on that basis.
Indeed, assuming that Assad does not start bulldozing entire cities, I cannot imagine any circumstances under which the US would support even limited military intervention in Syria without public approval by the Arab League and Turkey. That is why we have seen a game of “after you” with respect to Syria, with the Turks saying that they need Western support, the US saying that it needs regional support, and both saying that they need UN support.
Looking beyond the Middle East, Africa provides the best evidence for a geopolitics based as much on regional powers and institutions as on traditional great powers. While Annan has been trying his diplomatic best to resolve Syria’s crisis, upheavals in Senegal, Mali, Malawi, and Guinea-Bissau have been swiftly addressed by other regional powers. In particular, the African Union (AU) has acted repeatedly in the name of enforcing the African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance.
In Senegal, simmering violence accompanied recent elections in which President Abdoulaye Wade was allowed to stand for an unprecedented third term. The first round forced Wade into a run-off with Macky Sall, at which point the AU promptly sent an Elections Observer Mission, drawn from 18 African countries, to assess whether the elections were legal and the results “reflected the will of the Senegalese people.” We cannot be sure what impact the mission had on Wade’s ultimate decision to concede defeat to Sall, but knowing that the region was watching must have focused his mind.
The situation in Mali is more complicated, for it involves an ongoing secessionist movement, as well as a coup on March 21. But, after the coup the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed by the UN, immediately suspended Mali’s membership in the AU, imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions on the country, and placed travel restrictions on coup leaders. Just over two weeks later, ECOWAS announced that it had reached an agreement with the coup leaders to return the government to civilian rule in exchange for lifting the sanctions.
Likewise, AU President Jean Ping condemned a coup in Guinea-Bissau in early April immediately and in the strongest terms.
Those who interpret all moves on the international stage in terms of states’ eternal jockeying for power and prestige will never lack for evidence. The way in which the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is playing out in Syria is a prominent example. But countries’ desire to stop mass murder in their neighborhood, or to enforce regional norms, has its own force. Increasingly, when a regional institution will not act, powers from outside the region find it difficult to intervene. And, when a region does unite on a course of action, intervention by outside powers becomes either less necessary or more effective.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Anne-Marie Slaughter.

Sanford Weill from Wall St. Hustler to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

By Robert Scheer, from truthdig.com, April 18, 2012
How evil is this? At a time when two-thirds of U.S. homeowners are drowning in mortgage debt and the American dream has crashed for tens of millions more, Sanford Weill, the banker most responsible for the nation’s economic collapse, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
So much for the academy’s proclaimed “230-plus year history of recognizing some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders.” George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Albert Einstein must be rolling in their graves at the news that Weill, “philanthropist and retired Citigroup Chairman,” has joined their ranks.
Weill is the Wall Street hustler who led the successful lobbying to reverse the Glass-Steagall law, which long had been a barrier between investment and commercial banks. That 1999 reversal permitted the merger of Travelers and Citibank, thereby creating Citigroup as the largest of the “too big to fail” banks eventually bailed out by taxpayers. Weill was instrumental in getting then-President Bill Clinton to sign off on the Republican-sponsored legislation that upended the sensible restraints on finance capital that had worked splendidly since the Great Depression.
Those restrictions were initially flouted when Weill, then CEO of Travelers, which contained a major investment banking division, decided to merge the company with Citibank, a commercial bank headed by John S. Reed. The merger had actually been arranged before the enabling legislation became law, and it was granted a temporary waiver by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve. The night before the announcement of the merger, as Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley writes in her book “Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World ... and Then Nearly Lost It All,” a buoyant Weill suggested to Reed, “We should call Clinton.” On a Sunday night Weill had no trouble getting through to the president and informed him of the merger, which violated existing law. After hanging up, Weill boasted to Reed, “We just made the president of the United States an insider.”
The fix was in to repeal Glass-Steagall, as The New York Times celebrated in a 1998 article: “... the announcement on Monday of a giant merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group not only altered the financial landscape of banking, it also changed the political landscape in Washington. ... Indeed, within 24 hours of the deal’s announcement, lobbyists for insurers, banks and Wall Street firms were huddling with Congressional banking committee staff members to fine-tune a measure that would update the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial banking from Wall Street and insurance, to make it more politically acceptable to more members of Congress.”
At the signing ceremony Clinton presented Weill with one of the pens he used to “fine-tune” Glass-Steagall out of existence, proclaiming, “Today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority.” What a jerk.
Although Weill has shown not the slightest remorse, Reed has had the honesty to acknowledge that the elimination of Glass-Steagall was a disaster: “I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships,” he told Bloomberg News. “If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking, you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity.”
Instead, all such compartmentalization was ended when Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in late 1999. In his memoir Weill brags that he and Republican Sen. Phil Gramm joked that it should have been called the Weill-Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Informally, some dubbed it “the Citigroup Authorization Act.”
Gramm left the Senate to become a top executive at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which like Citigroup ran into deep trouble. Leach—former Republican Rep. James Leach—was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, where his banking skills could serve the needs of intellectuals. Robert Rubin, the Clinton administration treasury secretary who helped push through the Citigroup Authorization Act, was the most blatant double dealer of all: He accepted a $15-million-a-year offer from Weill to join Citigroup, where he eventually helped run the corporation into the ground.
Citigroup went on to be a major purveyor of toxic mortgage-based securities that required $45 billion in direct government investment and a $300 billion guarantee of its bad assets in order to avoid bankruptcy.
Weill himself bailed out shortly before the crash. His retirement from what was then the world’s largest financial conglomerate was chronicled in The New York Times under the headline “Laughing All the Way From the Bank.” The article told of “an enormous wooden plaque” in the bank’s headquarters that featured a likeness of Weill with the inscription “The Man Who Shattered Glass-Steagall.”
That’s the man the American Academy of Arts & Sciences now honors, among others, for “extraordinary accomplishment and a call to serve.” Disgusting.

Iranian talks move to Baghdad, May 23..is there a split between U.S. and Israel?

By Aaron Heller, The Associated Press, in Globe and Mail, April 19 2012
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday his country has never promised the United States it would hold off from attacking Iran while nuclear talks were taking place.

The comments, in which Mr. Barak said that a diplomatic push to reach a compromise with Iran was a waste of “precious time,” further exposed a rift between Israel and the U.S. over how to deal with Iran and its nuclear program.
Israel, arguing that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat, has said it will not allow Tehran to acquire a nuclear weapon. It cites Iranian calls for Israel's destruction, Iran's support for Arab militant groups and its development of missiles capable of striking the Jewish state.

Fearing that Iran is moving quickly toward nuclear capability, Israel has repeatedly hinted at an attack if Iran's uranium enrichment program continues to advance. Enrichment is a key process in developing weapons, and Israel says Iran is closely approaching a point where it can no longer be stopped.
The U.S. favours diplomacy and economic sanctions and has said military action on Iran's nuclear facilities should only be a last resort if all else fails.
Officials from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany met with Iran in Istanbul last weekend to discuss the country's nuclear program. The talks were described as positive, and they agreed to meet again on May 23 in Baghdad.
Mr. Barak told Israel's Army Radio he did not believe the talks would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. “We regret the time being lost. This is precious time,” he said.
Mr. Barak said the talks needed to yield quick results.
“It requires a few direct meetings where all the demands are put on the table. There you can see if the other side is playing for time, drawing it out through the year, or if indeed the other side is genuinely striving to find a solution,” he said. “In this light, any ‘time-outs,' especially when they are this long, do not serve our interests,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we maintain the view that this will probably not have an impact or bring the Iranians to cease their nuclear program. Of course we will be happy to be proven wrong,” he added.
Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran got a “freebie” from the international community, saying the May meeting gave the Iranians an additional five weeks to continue uranium enrichment without any restrictions. He said Iran should be forced to stop this immediately.
Nevertheless, President Obama says that the talks "gave nothing away" to the Iranians.
A picture of what this must be like for the Israelis....imagine for a moment someone knocks on your door, announcing it is going to blow up your home, with the inhabitants inside...but needs to make a few final arrangements in its weaponry before commencing the attack.
From that moment, is there any room for compromise, negotiation or trust between you and the intruder?
Not likely.
And that removal of all trust changes everything. Some would even call it blackmail, that Iran seeks to eradicate Israel from the face of the earth, according to her despotic, and some would say, 'mad' president.
The nuances of the degree to which the weapons have already been developed, when that knock is heard on the front door go out the window, immediately upon the receipt of the message of complete annhilation.
And yet, there are still many, including the  group of 5 plus 1 that apparently consider the threat one that can be negotiated back from the brink. I wonder how many neighbours, in your proverbial neighbourhood, if told that your house was to be razed adn your family killed, would take that position, that the 'bully', in this case, can be talked "down" from his violence.
Of course, everyone would seek to learn the background to the hatred this bully has against your family and home. And when they learned that the enmity stretches back centuries, and has had an intransigent element from the beginning, and that it is based on some deeply held tenets of distrust, revenge, jealousy and even some perversion of a religion, there might be even less confidence to negotiate. Call the police, would likely be the result.
And yet, in this case, we are all the police, and we are all part of the family inside that threatened home, and we are also part of the voice of those who threaten that home.
We are all conflicted about this strife. We do not want the home blown up; we do not want the inhabitants killed, or threatened with extinction; we do not want a fight that will bring us all into the conflict, just when there is a glimmer of hope that the economic and climate and terror threats in other parts of "our town" have given signs of abating...
Yet we are powerless eunuchs, it would seem, to affect any change in the plans of the insurgent threats.
And, we also have some different things that we believe need our attention, so we become somewhat distracted at the plight of our neighbour...and that seems to enhance the impact of the threat because it hangs over all of us even longer.
Is it gaining or losing its teeth?
Only time will tell us the answer, and our decisions, whether they are to postpone any collective action, or to make some different kinds of threats to push back, or to turn-the-other-cheek...continue to write the narrative of this story, without seeming to have any deterrent effect on the agent who knocked on our door, threatening to blow us off the face of the earth.

Louise Arbour: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms...a model for others?

By Louise Arbour. Globe and Mail, April 16, 2012
Louise Arbour is president and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

The most significant political event of post-Second World War Canada may be the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It has transformed a country obsessed with the federal-provincial division of powers and enabled it to address its diversity in a substantive, principled way. This was not inevitable. Credit is due in large part to the quality of the judicial branch of governance and, obviously, to the legal profession.


It often takes less foresight than good luck to succeed. The Charter of Rights could have gone the path of its disappointing predecessor, the Canadian Bill of Rights – a modest instrument of guidance to courts reluctant to challenge elected officials.

Many things contributed to the Charter’s central role in our constitutional democracy. At least three were counterintuitive.
The notwithstanding clause: This allowed legislators to override protected rights. Offensive to legal purists, it proved to be the perfect political compromise – designed to preserve the supremacy of elected officials, it, in fact, allowed the courts to avoid undue deference to them.
The three-year moratorium on equality rights: Conceived to give Parliament and the provincial legislatures an opportunity to make laws compliant with the Charter, it had the effect of ensuring that the first cases to come to the courts were familiar ones. It was a small step for the courts to strike down writs of assistance and enforce the right to counsel, a modest increase in the exercise of their common law powers. Had they been confronted at the outset with issues such as mandatory retirement or even women’s rights, they may have been much more hesitant to strike down offensive legislation, thereby creating a different, narrower scope for judicial review.
The Court Challenges Program: This was an admirable companion to the Charter. It expressed the government’s faith and commitment to rights enforcement, by equipping litigants and civil-society organizations with the ability to access the courts. This, in turn, provided the courts with high-quality Charter litigation without which the remarkable early Charter jurisprudence might have taken much longer to develop.
Many will deplore so-called judicial activism and the legalization of politics. They are wrong. Fundamental rights enforced by independent courts enrich a democracy that has set constitutional limits on itself. Charter litigation has provided a high-quality intellectual forum in which to debate issues that are not best left to majority diktat. Led by the Supreme Court, the Canadian judiciary has defined its proper place in constitutional governance. First assertive and willing to undertake substantive review of legislation, it has set a predictable framework for acceptable limitations on rights and avoided an adversarial relationship with Parliament, preferring dialogue to confrontation.
Unlike the U.S. judiciary, Canadian courts have, for the most part, avoided the taint of partisan political allegiances that erodes confidence in the judicial process. My own career would be unimaginable in the United States. I had three federal judicial appointments: to the Ontario High Court, to the Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court of Canada – the first two by a Conservative government, the last one under a Liberal one. Canadian judicial writing is accessible, often consensual, and dissent always respectful. It has set the tone for the peaceful resolution of some of the most divisive issues in any society.
Unfortunately, political parties have been impoverished by the rise of judicial prominence, or perhaps simply in parallel to it. The disenchantment with political life is currently widespread in mature democracies. But in terms of substance, the calendar of the Supreme Court of Canada compares very favourably with the platform of political parties.
From a global perspective, Canada now stands in an envious position in terms of quality of institutional governance. As democracy spreads over the world, it doesn’t always reach far beyond the setting of relatively free and fair elections. This often leads to stronger executive power and, at times, to a reasonably efficient legislative branch. Rarely is any attention given to the role of a professional, independent judiciary. It takes decades to construct, but in the resolution of conflicts, inevitable in any country, the rule of law is the best investment.

In Memoriam for Katimavik, a program of service to struggling Canadian communities

By Adam van Koeverden, Globe and Mail APril 18, 2012
Adam van Koeverden is an Olympic champion kayaker.

Young people today are facing a crisis of relevance. It’s not obvious to every kid where they’ll fit and what they have to offer society. Katimavik’s empowering work, its structured and meaningful activities, have provided more than 30,000 Canadians with the understanding that fulfilment doesn’t come from what we “want to have” but from what we “have to give.”

More than 1,000 Canadian kids who had signed up to work with Katimavik were slated to leave this July. More than 50 communities, some desperate for this kind of help, had work plans for them. Katimavik wasn’t phased out, it was cancelled. Abruptly. At the expense of Canadian youth and the communities they were preparing to serve.
Katimavik’s value is found in purposefully engaged youth serving our communities. That seems like well-spent money to me. A 2009-10 government study found Katimavik’s objectives “support and mirror the government’s priorities” and offered suggestions to increase efficiency and decrease the cost per participant. Katimavik’s reviews were glowing, never once was it suggested that it is worth scrapping.
A good government’s first priority should be the same as Katimavik’s first priority: service. Tossing Katimavik down the drain had nothing to do with service. In fact, the decision represents a neglect of the government’s duty to serve our communities, the youth who live there, and the young people anxious to travel to them to work, learn and serve.
When will politics in this country be devoted to service, instead of just, well, politics?
There is an even more important question emerging from the cancellation of Katimavik, the Canadian version in national terms of the U.S. Peace Corps, serving internationally.
And that is why has this government reduced everything to a rusted and worn criterion: something called a cost-benefit analysis, and then thrown Katimavik out because the benefits are somewhat internalized, both for the youth who have served and the communities in which they contributed.
It is not only service and self-discovery and development of community resources that are rejected by this short-sighted government, it is also knowledge and awareness of the complexities of the various regions, the cultural variety and richness of the many peoples of this country, and the potential to share that experience with all whose lives cross theirs after the service stint.
Scrawling a red line through the budget item dubbed Katimavik is both literally and symbolically a way of telling Canadians that this government does not care about its people, its youth and its struggling communities, nor does it care to be seen as providing opportunities for adventure, service, self-discovery, leadership and community development that have reached across the nation for the last half century since the inception of this program.
It is not a headline grabber, nor a political 'feather' in the cap of the federal government, and its low-key, unobtrusive but significant character is one of the important traits that makes it very Canadian. And, along with the young writer, himself a child of two Katimavik participants who met after attending the same university while serving in Katimavik ("meeting place") we regret the burial of another quality program of Canada's past, and potentially of her present and future at the hands of this seemingly blind and deaf government, at least to the things that matter to Canadians.

Chretien advocates Liberal-NDP merger. Rae scoffs at it...we now endorse it.

By Joan Bryden, Globe and Mail, April 16, 2012
Jean Chrétien is still promoting the idea of Liberals and New Democrats merging into one federal party, despite strong objections to the NDP’s approach to Quebec independence.

In an interview Monday, the former Liberal prime minister dismissed suggestions that a merger now – when the Liberals have been reduced to a third-party rump and New Democrats are on the rise – would amount to an NDP takeover of his once-mighty party.
Interim leader, Bob Rae, denounces the idea, while other pundits posit a middle road, of a completely new party, starting from "scratch" to determine if the ideas people want to fight for are strong and wide enough to generate such a party.
In the NDP, opinion  was obviously divided during the recent campaign for their leader, with Nathan Cullen arguing for co-operation, meaning that where Liberals are strong, the NDP would not run candidates to oppose them, and where the NDP is strong the Liberals would reciprocate.
He did not win, but his campaign generated both heat and light among many of that party's leaders.
I have written here, previously, that I neither favoured the merger of the NDP and the Liberals, nor did I expect it to happen. That was before so many of the truly regressive and unpalatable and ignominious acts and attitudes of the current government were laid bare for all Canadians to see, to contemplate and to refute.
Now, the situation is quite different.
Canada cannot afford, in the broadest sense of that word, another term of this government, with its anti-environment, pro-corporate, anti-rehabilitation, pro-punishment, grow the government with their own appointees-and cut thousands of civil servants (allegedly to save millions) but really to keep their own appointees and dismiss those of previous Liberal governments who are undoutedly anathema to their ideology, pro monuments to their political ego (jets, ships, prisons) and anti real crime prevention (scrapping the long-gun registry), pro-west and anti-Quebec....and the list goes on and on....not to mention the modus operandi of memorised talking points that simply deny reality to upstage and to talk over even the most temperate of interviewers....this government has to be dismissed in the election of 2015, if there is no legitimate step to dismiss them prior to that date.
And, if merger, which would be no walk in the park, and would cause considerable bruising and wailing and gnashing of teeth, would serve to bring all of Canada's people, ideas and campaign finances to bear on a unified campaign to oppose Harper and his government, then merger it is!
There is currently only limited evidence that Liberals, on their own, are regaining their once-prominent, sustainable and credible stature, although the current caucus is "punching far above its weight" in the commons, in the media and deserves huge accolades, including the interim leader, Bob Rae. There is also limited evidence that the NDP have made, or are likely to make, significant break-throughs in regions in Canada where they are traditionally soft or absent, in spite of a vigorous campaign for leadership, and the election of Tom Mulcair.
Mr. Rae says he is not running a political seminar, but rather a political party facing issues that matter to the Canadian people every day. True enough. And all Canadians respect him for that heroic effort. But it will take, in our view, the combined force, intellect, imagination and resources of both Liberal and NDP parties to convince Canadians that we have had enough of this Canadian version of the Tea Party, and it is past time for it to exit the national stage.

Transition program for "lifers" buried in morgue of Conservative's new Canada

By Bill Curry, Globe and Mail, April 16, 2012
Convicted murderers are among the ranks of federal workers losing their jobs through budget cuts.

The Globe and Mail has learned that one of the many federal programs that will be cut in its entirety is LifeLine, a program aimed at helping people with life sentences – or “lifers” – successfully re-integrate into society once they’ve been paroled.
At a starting salary of about $38,000, the program hires and trains successfully-paroled lifers to mentor other lifers who are still incarcerated or who have been recently released on parole.

“It’s too bad about the LifeLine. It helped me out a lot. It kept me out of prison,” said Peter Wozney, 44, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder when he was 16 and has been successfully paroled since August of 2009.
Mr. Wozney said he failed several times at parole – usually because of substance abuse issues – but he attributes the success of his last parole to using the LifeLine program in Windsor, Ont.
He said people who have been locked away for such long periods need guidance and advice on how to return to society.
“It’s going to hurt a lot of lifers inside, because I’ve seen a lot of lifers mess up in other places that are not LifeLine,” said Mr. Wozney, who speaks to school classes about his life. “We need someone to tell us what to do.”
Part of the job of LifeLine workers is to appear at parole board hearings to offer their perspective on the readiness of an inmate to leave incarceration.
The program was created after Canada officially removed capital punishment from the Criminal Code in 1976 and has been praised by those involved. But its supporters knew it was unlikely to survive the Conservative budget cuts.

“I have to tell you that I saw this coming because of the nature of the employees of LifeLine. It’s a pretty easy target politically,” said one lifer in the program, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The man, who was convicted and served a sentence for murder, says he was helped by the program while in prison and now helps others. He learned last week that he will lose his job as a LifeLine counsellor.
He says history shows the program works.
“It’s almost unheard of that lifers violently reoffend,” he said. “So as far as the public safety goes, I think [the program] works. It’s very cost-efficient. LifeLine’s been operating for 20 years, virtually without an incident.”
BY THE NUMBERS

26: number of paroled life-sentence offenders receiving salaries to support other lifers.
2,280: number of lifers who received support under the LifeLine program in 2010-11.
What's next? A restoration of capital punishment?
There are substantial arguments that point to this federal budget as one that will change Canada forever.
And, with this one-line erasing from the budget, the "tough-on-criminals-tone-deaf-on-rehabilitation" government will be able to point to how "reprehensible" are convicted criminals, when they return to the street, without LifeLine's integrating training, coaching, mentoring and transitioning back into life on the street.
And, of course, the government's talking points direct the reader-listener to supporting "research" without ever mentioning the source, reliability or veracity of that research. And none of us believe that line, anymore than we believe that this program is worthy of the cemetery, in Canadian cultural and historical terms.