Making babies in Canada could result in nutjob nationalists

Given that it's part of the Asper Empire, I suppose we can't expect much of the Gazette, but this piece it published online yesterday, entitled "Making babies in Canada could save money", is particularly appalling.

Author Dianne Rinehart's premise is that our governments should invest in artificial reproductive technologies rather than immigration, because the latter costs $1.6 billion in "departmental and resettlement costs," and growth from immigration currently outnumbers domestic births by three to one.

The first thing that strikes me about the piece is the barely-contained fear that "real Canadians" will be outnumbered by immigrants. It rears its ugly head every time the author throws in a statistic about rising immigration numbers as a self-evidently bad thing. That concern is probably racist and certainly stupid: after all, everyone but our First Nations were immigrants to Canada at one time, and look how we treat the original inhabitants!

The economic argument, as well, is completely disingenuous, even if Rinehart had provided a cite for her dollar figure. Consider, if you will, the financial implications of waiting for Canadian babies to contribute to the domestic economy. The Canadian Council on Social Development estimated that in 2004 it cost families on average $166,000 to raise a Canadian infant from birth to age 18. I really can't see how it could possibly cost more than that to simply open the doors to foreign nationals, who are often already trained and very willing to go to work.

Furthermore, and with all due respect to struggling would-be parents, I have a real problem with invasive, espensive fertility treatments. For one thing, it seems foolish to go to such lengths to increase the population of a planet already bursting at the seams. We especially don't need more citizens of so-called first world countries who damage the environment disproportionately. Secondly, it bothers me that many people will stop at nothing to create of and for themselves a little genetic replicant. There are so many children that need someone to care for them, and I don't care if you pull a Brangelina and truck them in from far-flung locales, or head to your local Ministry of Children and Family Development office: there's just no need (unless you're a couple of geniuses trying to breed the next generation of cancer-curing scientists) to replicate biologically when it involves such ridiculous expense and limited success rates. My final complaint is that any R&D and other government funding that go towards developing newer and better fertility treatments are at the expense of more pressing medical concerns. As we all know, there are just not enough health care dollars to go around.

The kicker in the article at hand, and I'll quote the paragraph in full, is where Rinehart states the following (after explaining that artificial reproductive technology is a better use of health spending than palliative care or heart disease):

Finally, if it's all about money - and not about families - consider what
else New Scientist reported: The findings "concluded ART could be as effective
at increasing birth rates as other proposed policies, such as raising the level
of child benefit" and - wait for it - "but would cost less."

This is the most ass-backwards logic of all. It first requires us to accept, as I clearly haven't, that encouraging population growth via domestic birthrates is prima facie superior to encouraging immigration. Then, it suggests that because it costs less, government money is better spent on artificial insemination than on actually increasing child benefits to struggling families. What a brilliant idea! Forget helping the parents who are currently trying to raise their existing children with little to no assistance from the state....we should do biological backflips and get them to pop out some more!

The author dresses her elitist and xenophobic wolf of a position in the sheep's clothing of feminism (commiserating with women who are maligned for delaying pregnancy) and environmentalism (claiming, nonsensically, that immigration contributes to congestion and pollution, since most new residents head to the urban centres. In reality, city living is well documented to actually reduce environmental pressures, because people are more likely to live in smaller residences, to commute less to work, and to take advantage of the other ecological efficiencies that result from high population density.).

In reality, though, her proposed solution is just straight-up white supremacism of a particularly crazy brand, and that's pretty disturbing even given the Gazette's well-known biases.*


*Of which you're well aware, right Scottay? Maybe you shouldn't show them your portfolio...

RIP Bertha Wilson

Canada's first female Supreme Court justice, Bertha Wilson, passed away this Saturday.

Justice Wilson sat on the SCC between 1982 and 1991, and was a staunch Charter supporter and author of a number of woman-friendly judicial opinions, perhaps most notably in R. v. Morgantaler and R. v. Lavallee (which accepted battered woman syndrome as a defence to murder).

Although she apparently did not call herself a feminist, Justice Wilson was avidly pro-choice and upon retiring from the bench chaired the CBA's Task Force on Gender Equality.

Justice Wilson had also been the first woman appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal. She was 83 at her death.

* Photograph: Michael Bedford, Supreme Court of Canada collection

Support VWSAC

I don't know Tom Williams, and I don't really care about his beard, but I think it's great that he's raising funds for the Victoria Women's Sexual Assault Centre.

VWSAC is a fantastic organization that helps hundreds of victims of assault every year. I volunteered there for the three years that I lived in Victoria and was very impressed with the quality of services they provide, all with limited funding and a small staff. In addition to individual and group counselling services, they also run a 24-hour crisis line and have volunteers with pagers who respond to emergency calls, meeting victims and accompanying them for post-assault hospital visits. There's also a great youth component run by Project Respect, promoting its acclaimed "Yes Means Yes" programme.

VWSAC always needs community support and I encourage you to help them in the great work they do. Click here to go to the GiveMeaning donation site.

What's the problem with homelessness in Kamloops?

The answer isn't, as you might expect, "uhh...because...people have no homes??"

According to Gay Pooler, general manager of the Kamloops Central Business Improvement Area, the problem is that it makes the streets just gosh-darn unattractive. In Monday's Kamloops Daily News, she told reporter Jason Hewlett that "we need to keep the streets pretty and safe." When he pointed out that "[m]ost homeless aren't dangerous," Pooler countered that "It's all about perception." Well, we wouldn't want the shoppers and business owners in our squeaky-clean downtown to have to face the fact that there are people in this city with nowhere to live (and forget about how safe that situation is for the people actually in it!).

She wants the RCMP to exercise "zero tolerance" when patrolling the downtown. Ron McColl, the manager of corporate programs and projects for the City of Kamloops, has described a new initiative where officers and outreach workers will interact with the expected influx of homeless people in order to find them housing and keep the streets "clean and safe." He didn't elaborate in the article, or in an interview yesterday on CBC Kelowna, about where these proposed homes will be found, but at least it shows some degree of awareness on the part of the City.

Not so for Pooler. In last week's Downtown Echo, she stated that the minimum wage should sit at $8.00/hour because "some people aren't worth more than $8," and anyone worth more than that is already being paid it. This week, in her "KCBIA Notes," she describes how she wants to see the local RCMP using the so-called Safe Streets Act, the Trespass Act, and municipal panhandling bylaws against "abnormal users" of the downtown, who should "not be comfortable on our streets."

This kind of anti-poor insensitivity and NIMBYism, apparently, is not just for barbers and councillors.

Nyuk nyuk

I was wasting time the other day reading archives of the Canadian blog Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style and came across a post concerning a US lawyer who sued the website DontDateHimGirl.com which purports to be a resource for women and lists the names of alleged cheaters. No word yet on whether the noted Kamloops lawyer whose name appears on the site is aware of same, or intends to file suit.

Whither my Bitch?

I was just up at Chapters this afternoon, using up a giftcard (Ian McEwan, Douglas Coupland, Wayson Choy...I'm in heaven!), and in shopping for magazines found that the local store appears to no longer carry any of Ms., Bitch, BUST, or Herizons. Instead, in the "Lifestyle" section where these titles are usually found (and not with the Harpers and Walruses in the current events section for some reason), shopping magazines like LouLou and Lucky have sprung up to fill the void.

One more reason I guess to shop small/local. Hello, Bob's PX!

Trading jobs

Courtesy of my darling brother at BCIT, a news release about a conference being held this weekend at SFU about women in the trades.

Although I'm a lazy slob who wouldn't touch physical labour with a ten-foot poleaxe (gonngggg), I think there is a glaring need for something to be done about the dearth of female tradespeople. I personally don't know a single woman working as a mechanic, electrician, bricklayer, or the like. I hear endless laments about how "kids these days" are all going to university and foresaking skilled labour, and how industries from forestry to plumbing are suffering when the old guys retire and nobody moves in to fill their spots. This is happening to an even greater extent in the trades than other fields. So isn't it kind of a no-brainer that industry look to a previously untapped labour source?

Although women have been gaining ground in the "professions," it is still very much the case that girls who don't follow highschool with post-secondary education will end up in the service industry, custodial jobs, or even child-rearing, rather than taking more remunerative work in the trades. In 2002, only 2% of registered apprentices in the top 15 trades were women. By 2004, women accounted for just 7% of employees in transportation, trades, and construction work. (See this StatsCan report from 2005.)

So, why are so few women choosing this type of work? The selection of workshops at the SFU conference offers some explanation. Fully half off them focus on either recognizing sexist mistreatment, avoiding sexist mistreatment, talking back to sexist mistreaters, or filing complaints of sexual harassment. Presumably this is still a major issue and a barrier to women entering the skilled trades. Now, I don't think the solution lies in educating tradeswomen about systemic discrimination. They're not the ones causing problems. But that's a long post for another day.

An article on www.apprenticetrades.ca cites the lack of female role models and "examples of ordinary women who have built a successful career working in a trade" as another reason that girls don't gravitate towards these jobs.

Finally, many women, and men too, also tend to think that female workers aren't strong enough for physical labour. In many instances, however, this is unwarranted discrimination. Take for example the 1999 Supreme Court of Canada case, British Columbia (Public Service Employee Relations Commission) v. BCGSEU, in which the complainant, a female firefighter working without trouble for three years, had been fired for failing to meet new physical standards put in place. Unanimously, the Court held that, excepting "undue hardship" to an employer, industry standards must accommodate differing abilities and must only be imposed in good faith and where necessary and logical. Where an imposed standard is not a "bona fide occupational requirement," it will not be a justifiable form of discrimination.

A recent Conservative press release ( "Women in Trades Get Another Boost From Canada's New Government") indicates that Harper may be doing something right for a change. Let's hope it sticks.