The Abdoul Abdi deportation case

The case of the Abdoul Abdi deportation is quite unbelievable. The background is Abdi came to Canada from Somalia with his sister at about age 6 in 1999. He was taken into the care of the Province of Nova Scotia and into the foster system. Importantly during this time in childhood, neither his foster parents nor the province applied for Abdoul Abdi to become a citizen of Canada. He never gained official status as a Canadian, although he had been living in Canada since he was brought here in 1999. So officially he is a foreigner, a Somali residing in Canada.

So fast forward to 2016. Abdi is now grown up and a convicted violent criminal. He has served time as an adult for crimes including aggravated assault. Due to his crime and violence, and his status as a foreigner residing in Canada, he has been ordered deported. Now some activists are fighting in court to keep Abdi in Canada for some unknown reason, and have been able to delay his removal from Canada. 

The court argument is apparently that when Abdi was a ward of the state as a child, Nova Scotia failed in its duty to file the paperwork to make him a permanent resident or citizen of Canada. Now with such status, especially citizenship, Abdi would be considered a Canadian, protected from deportation regardless of being a violent criminal. 

This whole thing is absurd on so many levels. Suppose Nova Scotia did fail in it's fiduciary duty to Abdi regarding his status in Canada. What does that have to do with the current deportation case. He doesn't have status and thus has no protection against deportation. His supporters seem to be arguing, bizarrely, that status should be retroactively applied for and granted - though granting status is from the Federal government, not the province, and we can't know if in this hypothetical case it would have been granted. So they are asking the court to intentionally disregard the actual facts of the case, set that aside, and instead indulge some pretend fantasy world where Abdi or his youth guardians applied for and was granted status, prior to committing the violent crime and incarceration that now has him ordered deported from Canada.

I reject the claim that there is a fiduciary duty on the part of Nova Scotia Community Services to even take care of these immigration papers for these wards of the state. The Province's role for these children is to ensure, via the foster care system, things like food, shelter and basic safety. Anything above that is extra, nice to have, best effort, but not specifically required. The immigration thing, services to non-Canadians, is not an expected role of Nova Scotia Community Services. So if the province fails to meet these extras in some cases then there is no liability on the province after the fact. 

Further, it was Abdi's personal responsibility to be aware of his own immigration status. He was free to inquire or apply on his own. He was not prevented in any way from taking care of his status on his own. Also he should have considered his status or lack of status before committing crime and being incarcerated. He could have considered that deportation was a likely outcome if he committed serious crime. 

 

The deportation situation Abdi is in is the result of his own actions. He has to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions, including deportation. It was not the responsibility of the people of Nova Scotia to provide Abdi some kind of legal cover to commit serious crime in the future in Canada, as his advocates seem to be arguing.

The whole court case is just nonsensical. Does the plaintiff really expect Abdi will be awarded citizenship as damages? The courts have no such authority to make such an award. Citizenship, and humanitarian exemption, cannot be awarded at this point due to the violent crime conviction. So do the plaintiffs seriously expect we will all suspend disbelief, just pretend the last 5 years didn't happen, backdate an application and approval to before the crime spree, and then magically have this status in place, then replay the last 5 years, but now with the cover of residency status. That seems to be what they are asking.

Even if it is determined that Abdi was wronged by the Nova Scotia Community Services? Well so what. That in itself does not create status. If Abdi, like any foreigner, feels he was wronged by the people of Nova Scotia, then he is free, from his own country, to hire a Nova Scotia lawyer and seek damages in Canadian court. So fine, like any foreigner with a grievance, hire a Nova Scotia lawyer from your own country, and the lawyer will seek damages on your behalf and wire you whatever they can collect on your behalf. However being a foreigner with a grievance certainly does not imply the individual can stay in Canada to pursue this claim. Hire a lawyer from afar like any other foreigner would have to.

Abdoul Abdi is not a Canadian. He is a foreigner residing in Canada with no status to be here. He should have been deported from Canada long ago. If he wants to seek damages against Nova Scotia from his own country he is certainly free to. In order to maintain confidence in the courts and the immigration system the government should deport Abdoul Abdi immediately "in the public interest", invoking the notwithstanding clause if necessary.

The thing about checkboxes

So there's a flap in Canada recently about a federal government summer jobs funding program. Apparently now to get funded, the applicant organization has to attest to some pro-abortion statement by checking on some checkbox.

When I first heard of it I was struck by how bizarre it was, this linkage. What could abortion possibly have to do with summer jobs for students? Anyway this is a straight out attack on Christians and pro-life, demanding that they renounce their beliefs in order to get this money. It is extremely scummy and cowardly to target the children. After all it is the youth, the students, who would be affected by these summer jobs being canceled due to their parents being pro-life. The kids didn't do anything wrong. Be a man Justin Trudeau and have the courage and character to confront your ideological enemies directly; instead of indirectly victimizing their children.

Now some might say render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Tell the federal government to keep their 30 pieces of silver. I guess that's fine for some summer jobs grant. The real issue here isn't about federal funding for summer jobs. It's about establishing a precedent where receipt of government services and benefits is conditional on expressing a particular view. There is no right to remain silent or keep your opinion to yourself, let alone openly hold a contrary opinion. You either attest to a government mandated viewpoint (a record of this attestation is kept permanently) or go without the government service.

Now there is government monopoly health care in Canada. Suppose someone arrives at their hospital emergency department with chest pain and shortness of breath. Upon arrival at triage, the patient is told to either check an abortion checkbox, or be refused health care service, go home and die. Why not, now that a precedent has been established these abortion checkboxes can start popping up everywhere.

Even more corrosive would be like the summer jobs checkbox. Imagine if the checkboxes show up at the emergency of the children's hospital. That would put the parents to a very severe test, faced with having to refuse to attest on behalf of their children and accept the consequences.

If Trudeau is re-elected then it's pretty much a lock that prescription drugs will be nationalized effectively under federal government control. So after 2019 you could go to your pharmacy for your heart or diabetes medicine you need to stay alive, and be told to check this abortion checkbox or go home empty handed. Now by Phillipians 1:19-21 the correct decision is to go home and die. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

Well this is what happens when the state is allowed to take control over so much of personal life and the economy. Trudeau demonstrates the government can prove to be a cruel and capricious puppet master. The government giveth, the government taketh away.

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I will say this about abortion and Trudeau's apparent intent to pick a fight on the abortion issue. The thing about war is, the war only ends when both sides agree to stop fighting. Trudeau may have had the prerogative to start the fight, but it won't be for him to say, okay enough we're not going to talk or fight about abortion any more.

Another thing about war is, you might lose. So you might want to be circumspect and keep the peace, especially if the status quo is favourable to your side. Pick fights carefully. Don't poke a sleeping bear.

Trudeau may feel smug that the courts have been on his side for at least the last 30 years. However judges and supreme court judges can change. Elected governments can change. Laws can be changed. The constitution can be changed. The notwithstanding clause is available.

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Previous Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper pretty much had it right. They accepted the courts decisions, perhaps with disappointment, and were resistant to having a public fight on such a divisive issue. Another politician who had it right was actually Bill Clinton with the doctrine of "safe legal and rare".

What's interesting and powerful about that is the third part, the "rare". Because it is actually common ground between pro-life and pro-choice. Something both sides can commit to achieving, perhaps in different ways. I believe the best strategy for pro-life is to leave aside the safe and legal part and focus on making abortion rare. After all if it is extremely rare then it would be moot if it was safe and legal. So pro-life can win by winning on rare, that part that matters most.

It's unfortunate that safe legal and rare is hardly talked about any more. In this current abortion fight there is no mention of rare in the attestation checkbox text. Instead it is now so common and accepted in our culture that it is part of applying for some summer job.

I suspect rare can be achieved. It requires cultural change, which is hard but I think achievable. Figure out how to change the culture so that these situations are seldom conceived in the first place. That would help, head off the problem at the source. Also change the culture so that if someone is in a difficult situation, then actually having the child is a less-bad option than abortion. Culturally, some type of Anna Karenina social stigma where someone who does the wrong thing and chooses abortion is then unable to rejoin polite society afterward.

Nicholas Butcher Kristin Johnston murder trial

There's a murder trial in Halifax getting some news coverage. see CTV link CBC link ATV link.

Nicholas Butcher is accused of murdering Kristin Johnston. The case is interesting in part because of the irony of it. Peace and love yoga instructor Kristin Johnston violently murdered. I must say upfront that Johnston died in a terrible and unjust way and she did not deserve what happened.

From the evidence there's kind of a frustration with Butcher and Johnston with each other, around money. Kristin needed a successful male provider (such as an established lawyer with a name law firm) to subsidize her money-losing yoga studio. Nicholas needed a successful businesswoman to help tide him over while his law career got untracked. Turns out neither was able to meet the financial needs of the other.
Kristin should have kept Butcher in the friend zone and made it clear he had to establish a successful career in law or somewhere else before she would commit to living together or a serious relationship. Nicholas I feel kind of a sadness about his life before the murder. He finished Dalhousie law school in 2015 but was apparently unable to take the next step and secure an articling position.
So if Butcher is just turned 36 now, he would have been about 34 in 2016 when the murder happened, and 33 in 2015 when he finished law school. yeah 33 and still in school. For a man at age 23 to be just finished law school - scrambling and hoping for an articling position - south end apartment - several part time jobs. That kind of salad days thing is kind of a cool scene at 23. But at age 33 it's kind of sad. By age 33 many male lawyers are partner or partner track, not struggling for an articling position from the outside.

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For Butcher taking the stand in his own defense. It's kind of crazy. I don't think he has helped himself much. Although he hurt himself by establishing credible motive for the murder. I wonder if he is trying to get off for the murder, or is up there trying to smear Johnston posthumously and make her look bad (or at least balance out the coverage which has been heavily pro-Johnston to this point). He has seemed to make a point to present some unflattering evidence about Johnston and her character.
Her yoga studio failed - more on that below
They started dating in June 2015 and were effectively living together by July 2015. yeah one month later.
On the same day she broke up with Butcher, March 25, she was in bed with Mike Belyea, whom she had been messaging with on Facebook behind Butcher's back. Later that night went back to her home and bed with Butcher. So yeah if you're keeping score in bed with two guys the same night, at age 32.
So he seems to be making a point of exposing Kristin to engage in questionable, tawdry activities. He looks no better but he perhaps doesn't care considering where he is now.
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About the yoga studio failing. That is not necessarily a black mark on Kristin. Businesses close all the time. New businesses tend to fail. It happens.

The yoga thing has followed a similar arc I've noticed over at least the last 30 years. There's some existing activity or hobby with a small number of established businesses servicing it. Then there's a sudden surge in public interest in this activity, a bit of a craze. A number of new businesses pop up around it. Public interest peaks, levels off, then eventually settles close to historic levels. Most of the new businesses close. So yoga studios are in with
baseball and hockey cards
pretzels
country music bars
pool halls
scrapbooking
martial arts / MMA gyms
yoga

Starbucks for what it's worth

I've noticed some strange headlines go by in my RSS around the recent Starbucks controversy in Philadelphia. Some of them defy even minimal reasoning.
It was a potentially life changing meeting
hmmm, well looking at the pictures, they didn't seem dressed for such an important meeting. If I had a potentially life changing interview or business meeting I or pretty much anyone would have put on a suit or at least nice business casual.
Also if this meeting was so important, they could have tried harder to make sure it happened. For about $2 they could have just bought a cookie, or for $5 a coffee and they could have made any controversy or negative attention go away. I know if I had a potential life changing meeting I would just spend the $2 to keep the peace so that this meeting can go off without any hitch or negative vibes.
They feared for their life when the cops were called
Well in that case why not just spent $2, buy a cookie, and the problem goes away. For that matter just leave and avoid this confrontation with police if you really believe your life would be in danger. If I felt that the police being called could cost me my life, then I would make at least some minimal effort to avoid the police being called. Again for a $5 coffee, or just walk out and leave, they avoid this supposed possibly deadly police encounter.


Oh by the way. Some other notes
It is totally standard to reserve washrooms for paying customers. In polite society you make a purchase at a business if you wish to use their washroom, without having to be told to.
Hold yourself to a higher standard. I've heard whining about white homeless bums being allowed to loiter in Starbucks. That's just sad using that as your comparison. That only lowers yourself to their standard. Don't do that. Be better.
If they were concerned it might make the person they were meeting uncomfortable if they got coffee first. Well after a certain amount of lateness, if the person they were meeting had any class or understands polite society, then that person would understand if they bought a coffee in order to secure a table there. No reasonable person they were meeting, who was late, would have a problem with them getting a drink first. They could have still made a purchase to get a washroom code and just poured out the coffee, if they wanted to order their drinks all together. Also they could have bought a cookie and put it in their pocket, or just thrown it out, if it was important they all order together.

MNP Debt solutions ad

There was a comical ad running on ATV Live at 5 last week from MNP debt solutions. The close enough video is on YouTube

The commercial and YouTube claim that this is an Actual Client. I noticed comments are closed on the video, hmmm.

I found it amusing. I like how the heroine spoke of "unexpected bills" after a separation. Yes who knew that your husband had been paying the rent, power, cable, phone, cell phone, and internet all those years. I'd thought electricity was like sunshine, it was just something that we all get for free.

I couldn't help but notice heroine was well put together. Perhaps if she spent less on hair, makeup, and clothes she might not have ended up in such a financial bind.

Meh if she was so reliant upon her husbands paycheques then perhaps she might have acted differently to preserve the relationship and prevent it from failing. Oh well. She does come across as entitled an unlikeable in the video.

In the video she brags about being debt free now. Although she didn't actually say she paid off all her debts. I guess it's left as an exercise to the reader to determine how she became "debt free".

I suppose if you default on your debts via bankruptcy or proposal then you can say afterward that you are now "debt free", though it's nothing to be proud of. In a way it's, ahem, unfair to those who inherited a bad situation with debt due to the irresponsibility of another and made the sacrifice and effort to actually pay off their share of everything and become debt free through the honourable path.

Justin Trudeau and Pipelines

I don't think Trudeau wants any pipelines to be built in Canada. He outright canceled Northern Gateway and Energy East. He was content for Obama to do the dirty work on getting the Keystone project killed. But then when Trump was unexpectedly elected on the US side his hand was forced and he had to approve it.

So then Trans Mountain. I suspect this was a "fake" approval, with a nod to the activists to just go ahead and block the actual construction either with lawsuits, and direct illegal obstruction on the construction sites. He is using the B.C. premier, and US-funded activists as his proxies to carry out his wish to have Trans Mountain be abandoned.

Even with the press conference last Sunday there was announcement of a new act around jurisdiction. That doesn't make sense. The Federal government already has jurisdiction under the constitution. The purpose of this act is to just delay and draw things out in years of legislation and court cases. It also legitimizes the cases of those currently using lawfare to block Trans Mountain in the courts. But that is Trudeau's intent, that the project be blocked, Kinder Morgan gives up and goes away (like TransCanada did with effectively canceled Energy East).

Health care in Nova Scotia

Things are not looking so good lately in Nova Scotia health care.

Nurse fired at Cape Breton hospital after patient death. A patient who had dementia "was found dead in the early morning hours of Feb. 23 outside on the grounds of the Cape Breton Regional Hospital." yikes. Well apparently and a bit to my surprise, it is possible in government health care in Nova Scotia for an employee to get fired.

In Halifax a man called 911 when he was already at QE2 emergency. The guy had been down to ER 4 times and couldn't get any traction. Turns out he had stage 4 lymphoma. Although David Doucette himself got service after taking drastic measure, what he did establishes a bad precedent.

The ambulance/emergency system in its current form will collapse if this becomes the norm, people stepping out of the ER if they feel they are unsatisfied with the level of service in triage/ER, then pulling out their call phones and calling 911 to come back into ER this time from an ambulance, effectively in a sense bypassing triage and jumping the line. Obviously once someone is at ER, they don't need an ambulance to take them to ER. The media should have spoken out more strongly against what Doucette and his girlfriend did.

And now these same employees who deliver these health care outcomes, are themselves seriously considering an illegal wildcat strike. Which I find ironic in light of these recent stories of the service they have been delivering to the patients whose taxes pay their salaries, benefits and pensions already. sheesh.

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Together it seems that health care is seizing up in Nova Scotia. Which is remarkable as it has been under government central planning now for 50 years, two generations and counting. Medicare is not a new thing, there are now decades of experience planning and administering government health care. And amazingly it is still a train wreck. And getting worse, while spending grows every year.

The think with ER, to fix ER you need to fix the family doctor issue, the overcrowded inpatient wards issue, the nursing home issue. These things are all related, the visible symptoms of a failing system. ER on its own cannot be fixed, not with the $600 million "one time" Don Downe money bomb just a few years ago which we were assured would fix everything, not Jamie Baillie's $2 billion "one time" money bomb for health care from the election campaign just this year.

The thing is, from primary care through to nursing homes, how can you have all this administration, all this central planning, and yet appear to be completely unprepared for these developments, years behind in addressing anything, always caught off guard, seemingly lurching from crisis to crisis.

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So where is it going to go? There is strong evidence that, two generations in, the original medicare dream is failing. The objective evidence and data is it just can't be fixed or saved in its traditional form. So what will emerge? Which way will it break? Will it end up like Venezuela health care, or perhaps a US-style system, or perhaps a European or NHS outcome.