Private school gender politics, Part II - Names are named

Christie Blatchford: Posh Vancouver school places staff under gag order after teacher fired

Fraser Academy, the expensive Vancouver private school where last month a teacher was fired after making allegedly “triggering” remarks to a Grade 12 law class, has put its staff under a gag order.

Maureen Steltman, the school head, told Postmedia in a brief emailed statement the school “does not comment on personnel issues, even when we take issue with public inaccuracies.”  ...

Christie documents a history of similar abuses by this tyrannical school head-mistress, closing with:

... As for the teacher who was dismissed last month, he received a notice this week from the Teacher Regulation Branch, telling him the Fraser Academy has “provided a report about your conduct.”  He is so crushed and distraught, he said, he may voluntarily surrender his teaching certificate.

Nice! I hope that teacher can summon the nerve (and cash) to take Fraser Academy to court for wrongful dismissal and publicly expose their insanity.   If he identified himself perhaps he could get some crowd funding from, say, The Rebel.  I'd be willing to chip in.  Or, (I hate to even suggest such a thing) failing that take the bastards to the BC Human Rights Tribunal (no cost for complainants) - on second thought, those 'social justice' morons would likely side with the school.

Gender politics infecting private schools

Christie Blatchford: B.C. teacher fired for having the wrong opinion

A teacher at a posh private school in British Columbia was fired last month after making an innocuous comment about abortion to his Grade 12 law class.

Though there is no way of knowing, since discipline matters are shrouded in secrecy, it may be the first time a Canadian teacher has been fired not amid allegations of impropriety, but for having the wrong opinion.

... Before classes even started last fall, teachers underwent serious “gender training” given by QMUNITY, an organization for LGBTQQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and two-spirit) people. Teachers were told in no uncertain terms, for instance, that “no one is 100-per-cent male or female” and that everyone is somewhere on the “gender spectrum.”

... Unsurprisingly, students at the school, where $30,000-a-year tuition buys small classes, regularly say “I’m so triggered” and are allowed to walk out of class. 

... What happened to the teacher over the ensuing few days sounds like something out of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China, where people were subjected to what were known as ideological struggle sessions, forced to “confess” to various imagined sins before large crowds, and roundly denounced.  

... Postmedia is not identifying the school at the teacher’s request. “They torched me,” he said, “but I’m reluctant to damage the brand … So many kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks … are valued and helped here,” he said.

That teacher should be encouraged to name names.  The school and it's administrators need to be identified, named and shamed. This idiocy needs to be put down. The student who complained sounds like she suffers a mental illness - an illness likely contracted in her Queer studies classes. Given that the school is in Vancouver it is highly possible that much of the gender identity nonsense originates with the likes of Dr. Mary Bryson, the radically queer UBC "gender studies" professor who Christie wrote about in connection with Jordan Peterson's troubles .

And, as it stands, if anyone needs a "safe space" in that school, it's the regular teachers. They need protection from sick students and their enabling administrators.

U of T debate: Free speech and Bill C-16

Jordan Peterson debates a hostile pair of radical social justice warriors:



Christie Blatchford's summary of the event began: "My God, if that thing at the University of Toronto on Saturday was a debate about free speech, then the battle is already well and truly lost.

An open letter to Robert Fife and all the other media jackals at the "Duffy" trial

John Pepall: Mike Duffy's trial by media:

Sub judice. It’s the idea that when a matter is before the courts we should follow the allegations, the evidence and the arguments but leave the courts to decide what to make of it all.

... sub judice is not just some quaint leftover from the days when lawyers were supposed to know some Latin. It has a point: that matters that are to be decided by the courts should be left to them to decide; that they should not be subject to popular pressure telling them what to do.

... The media, when it is not just partisan, which much of it is, is flopping between unctuousness and the cultivation of populist [resentment] against anyone comfortable on the taxpayer’s dime.

...  It’s juicy gossip. And like all gossip, it is fuelled by malice and ignorance. ...

 And while the column is about Duffy's trial, the most recent phase has really been the trial-by-media of Stephen Harper.  Pepall's column would make a good open letter directed to the likes of Robert Fife (CTV) and Andrew Coyne (Post Media) [explicitly excluding Christy Blatchford]. 

Andrew Coyne - a nasty, partisan Media Party naif

Coyne's most recent contribution to Media Party yellow journalism opens with:

I am beginning to think we have done Stephen Harper a disservice. No, I’m sure we have. In fact, I think we — and by we I mean the media, me included — have been grossly unfair to him, and never more so than in the matter of Mike Duffy’s expenses. 

You will be familiar with the picture we have created of him: suspicious, paranoid, controlling, a leader who trusts no one, leaves nothing to others, insists on taking a hand in even the smallest matter. Well, you’d be suspicious, paranoid and controlling, too, if everyone around you was lying to you all the time.

And that's just for openers!  What follows is quite, let's say, uncharitable.

Coyne's opening sarcasm is actually a fairly accurate statement of the Media Party's characterization of Stephen Harper throughout his entire time in office.

Of course, he is suggesting, sarcastically, that the media (him included) have not created such a picture - that those who think so are just being "paranoid".  But that "picture" is a meme the media started and has continuously reinforced from square one.  And it is one that Harper's other opponents have adopted as routine talking points.

Coyne's entire column is just one more reinforcement of that smear.  "Harper, the paranoid micromanager not only knew every detail of his chief of staff's  handling of the Duffy affair but was directing the whole thing."  That's what beggars belief!

The simplest and most believable scenario is that Stephen Harper the CEO of the Government of Canada, like any other successful CEO of a large enterprise, would have entrusted a relatively minor internal problem, like the handling of the Duffy affair, to his chief of staff - just like he said he did.  Furthermore, any other CEO, not being subject to a partisan, hostile media would not have fired his COS but instead given him a raise along with a commendation.

Coyne needs to stop being so naively, blindly and nastily partisan and start paying attention to Christie Blatchford.  Better yet, the Post should give him back to the CBC, full time.

Day 395 of the endless Mike Duffy trial

Christie Blatchford: "At the Mike Duffy trial, it’s hard to tell who is really the accused"

First, watch Christie's video ... 

... this freaking trial, where a passerby, sitting in, would assume that Wright, the witness, is the alleged perpetrator, or perhaps the PM, and where ... every thundered question ... echoes across the land and into the campaign buses where it is parsed to shreds as though the question was the evidence, not the answer. ...

 Father Raymond de Souza: "The Duffy scandal is not worth the attention, or the cost" 

... a very strange scandal that leaves everyone looking bad, but Canada looking relatively good. 

... The criminal law is a blunt instrument, and this criminal trial, drenched in political showmanship, is a blunt instrument put to ill use.

... The problem Senate expenses does not justify the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, hundreds of hours of court time and the huge quantity of public attention given to it ...

Sadistic feminist bullies use courts to criminally harass critic

Political activists Steph Guthrie and Heather Reilly, with the cooperation of the "justice" system, are  putting Gregory Allan Elliott (and family) through legal, financial and emotional hell.

Christie Blatchford has been covering Elliott's trial.

The verdict is due on October 6, 2015 and has huge implications for Elliott's personal freedom and for free speech in general. Any "criminality" here is that of the complainants and the legal system for participating in prosecuting this clearly bogus case.

#IStandWithGregoryElliott

A realistic assessment of Omar Khadr and his lawyer

Christie Blatchford is one of the few mainstream media commenters who doesn't think of Omar Khadr as some kind of benign victim, if not hero:

... what Edney is doing is unorthodox and arguably even a risky mixing of the professional with the personal. While your lawyer is your best friend and sometimes your only one when you’re in trouble, he doesn’t usually move you into his house.

... I wonder if any lawyer who has so devoted himself to a client, can see him or her clearly.

... Edney also [accused the prime minister of being a mean, anti-Muslim bigot].  This was one of those examples of a defence lawyer imagining he has the exclusive patent on principled conduct, which is ridiculous. ... it’s loathsome to ascribe the worst of motives – racism – to the prime minister.

Omar Khadr has spent his entire adult life immersed in radical Islam and jihad.  It stretches credulity to the extreme to believe that he has all of a sudden transformed his thinking and his allegiances.  No doubt al-Qaeda and Khadr view Dennis Edney and Khadr's media cheerleaders as some of their most useful idiots.

Cowardly media poseurs v. Ezra Levant

The news is saturated today with stories and opinion pieces about the Islamist terrorist murders at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris yesterday.  Many made mention of the publication of the Danish Muhammed cartoons by Jyllands-Posten and the Canadian media's refusal to publish them in solidarity.  A sampling: 

Christie Blatchford:

"Every newspaper in the free world should today be reprinting one or another of the brilliant cartoons that may have provoked the wrath of the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, or the original offending cartoons of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 which set the Muslim world to rioting and puking in 2006 and which every paper in the free world ought to have reprinted way back then, but mostly didn’t. "

Andrew Coyne:

"one of the few magazines in the world to publish, back in 2006, the so-called “Danish cartoons ... Whole features were written about the controversy that never once showed readers what exactly the fuss was about. And if we are honest, we will admit the reason we did not publish them was because we were scared to.”

Terry Mosher:

"And yet the Economist, the Globe and Mail and most other news organizations around the world, including Canwest, the precursor to the Postmedia Network, refused to reproduce those cartoons despite their newsworthiness. ... One of the only exceptions: Charlie Hebdo... "

None acknowledged the one journalist who actually had the journalistic integrity and balls to re-publish those Danish cartoons at the time - EZRA LEVANT!

A general search of the Vancouver Sun, the National Post and Post Media in general produced no columnist who mentioned Ezra in connection with this story.  It's one thing for these poseurs to be totally lacking in courage.  It's another to willfully ignore the one fellow journalist who is not.

The one exception to this general rule for Canadian media was Maclean's Magazine who carried an interview with Ezra. The final question and answer:

.... Q. You criticized journalists and media organizations six years ago for not printing the cartoons. Has the culture changed at all, in your opinion?

A: Oh my God, it’s absolutely worse! Do you think the Globe and Mail is going to show a Danish cartoon of Muhammad tomorrow? Do you think the CBC will? The Daily Telegraph is already pixelating pictures from Charlie Hebdo. Do you really think we are less cowardly today than nine years ago? All these people putting “Je Suis Charlie“ on their Twitter avatar; you cowards! That’s not defying anybody. Put the picture of the cartoon in your avatar. That’s courage. Not a lot of courage, but baby steps. “Je Suis Charlie”? No you’re not, actually, because Charlie Hebdo published the cartoons, and Charlie Hebdo got killed.

Update: Here's Rex Murphy's excellent column of Jan 10th, "We Are Not Charlie Hebdo".  Though, he too fails to note the one example, Ezra Levant, who is qualified to make that claim.

Magnotta found guilty

Phew, that's a relief!  Just this morning there was considerable front-page hand-wringing about why the jury was taking so long:

... Jurors may have split into bitter, screaming factions. They may have been trapped for days by a single, stubborn holdout. In the close quarters and high stress of sequestration, they may even have been tormented by simmering sexual tensions. ...

Attawapiskat - "a disgrace not a surprise" says Blatchford

Maybe it's a disgrace, but  like Ezra (below) I don't feel guilty. If it's a problem that has a solution, only the Indians themselves can figure out how to solve it.

Christie seems to think we can, and should, do it for them.  For example:

Christie: "... I’d dispatch the Canadian army, with its fabulous engineer corps, up to Attawapiskat pronto. ... I’d have them repair or throw up housing sufficient for the 2,300 residents ..."
['Giving' them stuff, doing it for them, solves nothing. Among the biggest problems on the reserve is that the residents have no employment and, worse, have no skills. If crappy housing is the problem wouldn't it be better to train the locals and get them to build their own houses? A bonus would be that they'd be more able and likely to maintain them later (and to build new ones when needed). A further bonus would be that they'd have skills they could take south with them should they choose to escape the reserve.]

Christie: "... The longer term one would see some of the big brains in Canada (that would necessarily also include some strategic thinkers from the military) locked in a small room until they figure out something better than the infantilizing Indian Act and the paralysis engendered by the reserve system. ..."
[Here we go again, the "big brains" in the south figuring out how to solve the Indians' problems. Infantalizing them further. The Indians need to figure out for themselves what they want, and what it is practical to do. Christie gives the Indian so-called "leaders" too easy a ride. They've been a giant flop up to now. Make them get their act together. And perpetual welfare subsidizies (throwing more money at it) isn't a solution.]

Gary McHale, a true Canadian hero

Gary McHale with Michael Coren providing a reminder that:

Gary McHale is a true hero;
Dalton McGuinty is a despicable, law-ignoring (if not law-breaking) weasel;
The OPP are contemptible enforcers of McGuinty's banana-republic lawlessness;
Julian Fantino - see OPP above;
Tim Hudack is a cowardly political weasel;
Stephen Harper should be ashamed of himself for appointing Fantino to his cabinet.

Celebrity farewell to Jack Layton

Christie Blatchford penned an excellent column about the celebrity treatment Jack Layton's untimely death is receiving.  Naturally, as can be seen in the comments, Jack's fans are not pleased with Christie's take :)

Jack Layton was a likeable, upbeat guy who lived and breathed socialist politics and died too young. But he deserves honest appraisal not the fawning, over-the-top sentimentality served up by most of the media. Jack's final "letter to Canadians" was the first thing I read after learning of his death and I was disappointed to find it full of NDP talking points and concluded with meaningless platitudes. It sounded as if it had been written by party hacks, which, as Christie points out, it had. They didn't do him any favours.

Whatever. R.I.P. Jack Layton.

Update (from the comments):

dmorris: "I heard the Taliban was sending a squad to do the 19 gun salute,hope they restrain themselves and use blank cartridges." :)
Calgary Junkie: Christie on the Bill Good Show yesterday (10:00 am).

Upperdate: Paul Tuns [via].

Indians' "Dysfunctional governance"

It's nice to see Christie Blatchford redeem herself today after her article last Wednesday:

I said once this week that the competition for seats on the Samson council (a dozen people ran for Chief, 92 for 12 council positions) was surely a sign of a healthy community, I was dead wrong.

... on reserves, it usually means just the opposite: The reason such jobs as so hotly contested is because residents are desperate to get a piece of a highly politicized pie, not to mention the jobs for family members.

She goes on to identify the real problem on reserves, namely:

... the degree of dysfunction in First Nations governance ... "unmatched in any other jurisdiction in Canada."

And the "dysfunction" is primarily due to corruption and incompetence. It's something that everyone, including most Indians, have known for decades but have been unable to change. It's a wonder that rank and file Indians haven't haven't taken matters into their own hands and, like certain Arabs with their "Arab Spring", set about "dealing with" their crooked, incompetent so-called leaders.

Update: There's a decent comment thread at Christie's article in the Digital Post.  This comment from one Robert Reynolds makes a a good point in response to an aboriginal commenter.  I've not seen it made in a long while:

Weird, you say your people are denied the resources. How is that? Look behind the curtains and what you see is that Native peoples receive money and special status at the expense of everyone else in the country and have otherwise exactly the same rights as everyone else. There is absolutely nothing stopping any of you from integrating into the mainstream (and many have). This isn't apartheid with walls keeping you in as so many would like us to believe. All this business about treaties and ownership and rent are just a fiction. Unless a band member is politically connected and able to plug into the gravy train at the top, it's a hopeless grind of substance abuse and poverty with a small monthly cheque. No future in that for the individual band member struggling to make something of his life. Welfare dependency comes in many forms but they all boil down to the same thing in the end.
Despair.
In life you get out what you put in and there is no free lunch.

Very true.  Not counting special treatment and benefits paid for by taxpayers, Aboriginals have exactly the same rights and opportunities, including access to off-reserve resources, as every other Canadian.  If they want to live on-reserve with all its limitations - decrepit housing, unemployment, gangs, violence and crappy, corrupt government - then it's strictly up to them.  No one's FORCING them into this  life. If it's "apartheid" as so many loony-leftists (and Indians) like to claim, then it's self-inflicted "apartheid".  But I won't deny that Indian industry players, including (especially?) Chiefs and Councils, have gone out of their way to induce Indians to remain in a state of welfare dependency to keep the gravy flowing.

The Indian Saga - Part MCMXVIII

Christie Blatchford on the shooting death of five year old Ethan Yellowbird on an Alberta Indian reserve:

“... overflowing garbage bins and ramshackle homes and as many people as rez dogs wandering the rutted roads ... homes on the Samson town site are still sad shacks behind their paint...

“... a half-dozen gangs operating now on the Samson reserve and the three others also near Hobbema. ... slaying of a dear little boy as he lay sleeping in his bed ...”

Nevertheless:

“... he [RCMP Sgt Jim Lank] believes the band is well-governed....”

Sgt Lank is either being exceedingly diplomatic or he’s got his head up where the sun don’t shine.

Christie Blatchford suggests a sign of good-governance is that “92 people ran for 12 council positions, a dozen for the chief ’s job ...”.   It’s more likely a “sign” that the chief and council, as on most reserves, get to control how the mountains of cash from Ottawa and/or oil royalties are spread around.

I hope Christie is being ironic in this column because, otherwise, it’s little more than sentimental drivel. The only ray of light is the news that AFN Chief Shawn Atleo is calling for the scrapping of the Indian Act along with the Ottawa Indian bureaucracy.

All you need to know about the detainee "scandal"

Joanne at Blue Like You provides the links that give the proper perspective on this media and opposition hyped non-issue.

Update (from the comments): Wilson points out Christie Blatchford's outstanding column which complements what Terry Glavin had to say on the audio link Joanne refers to (and this to say on his blog today).

Lisa Raitt and the AECL isotope “business”

Christie Blatchford has the right take on Industry Minister Lisa Raitt’s accidentally recorded ( deliberately exposed by the media) private remarks about the on-going Atomic Energy Canada Ltd medical isotopes crisis:

MPs and various opposition leaders were calling Ms. Raitt's remarks "disparaging" and "irresponsible" and demanding she apologize and/or be fired.

...and Liberal pundit Warren Kinsella ... was describing the minister's comments as "disgusting" and "deplorable."

I was ready to beg for mercy before 9 a.m., but by late afternoon ... I wanted to slit my wrists.

[At CTV] Ms. Rinaldo was asking Ms. Taber about the propriety of what Ms. Raitt had said on the tape ... and Ms. Taber replied, "I would hope, even in private conversation, we wouldn't hear … ministers talking about other portfolios in such a cavalier way."

Even in private? Are you bloody kidding me? ... You should hear what women say in private – about friends they love, about colleagues they admire, let alone about men they might like to shag, strangers, or say, bosses. You should hear what editors say at news meetings

... The Canadian media made of the proverbial molehill this sad little mountain,

... What a nation of ninnies we have become.

In other words it’s a non-issue so, politicians, press and pundits please stop being such hypocritical twits and just shut your pie-holes.

Meanwhile, at the Financial Post Terence Corcoran pegs the real issue, AECL’s inability to reliably produce medical isotopes, as yet another example of ‘government enterprise’ gone south:

... Money has never solved AECL's problems, and never will. The present value of all federal cash thrown at AECL over the decades exceeds $30-billion.

... numbers are hard to find thanks to opaque federal reporting standards.

... AECL's isotope business ... is a giant money loser, with Ottawa subsidizing isotopes that are used by medical service providers in the United States and elsewhere.

... the political storm in Ottawa over isotopes as a great health-care issue does nothing to help Canadians understand the quagmire surrounding AECL and the isotope industry.

... The global isotope market, especially the North American branch of it, is a tangled mess of health-care regulations, drug-approval bottlenecks, price controls and politically driven decision making.

... Drug approval processes in Canada and the United States -- requiring hundreds of millions of dollars per approval--discourage new products.

... Once drugs are approved, government agencies that set prices for use of isotope-based treatments and scans set prices low to keep costs to governments down.

... when Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff decry the shortages of isotopes, they might want to ask what role government policy has had creating the shortage, first by controlling and limiting the market for isotope use, which in turns sends the wrong signal to isotope producers.

... So now the world is facing a global isotope shortage, brought on by a series of government-installed barriers to their adoption, production and sale.

As for most ‘government enterprise’, it’s situation normal - all f**ked up.

Paralyzed by politeness and racial politics

Christie Blatchford on the terror trial in Brampton:
"politeness and racial politics" otherwise known as "political correctness".

Read it all here.

You know what is the really sobering thing about that ongoing terror trial in Brampton?
Clue: It's not that there was a plot to attack Canadian targets. And of course there was; the court has heard evidence up the ying-yang that there was just such an enterprise afoot.
[...]
It's that one spring day in 2006, the leader played for a group of young men a nauseating beheading video on his laptop in a restaurant on Danforth Avenue, a main Toronto drag. ... Yet no one appears to have uttered a word in protest.
It's that up at the much-maligned winter training camp held in December, 2005, near Orillia, Ont., members of the group regularly went to the local Tim Hortons wearing their camos ... they were hardly the picture of subtlety. Yet they did it anyway.
... most Torontonians are crippled unto paralysis by the unique combination of innate Canadian politeness and the racial politics of their city, and these guys knew it.

A way with words

Christie Blatchford, in Kandahar, writes a very moving tribute to a fallen soldier and his "brothers in arms".

Too bad Christie didn’t stay with the ‘Post’.

[via The Torch]