Dumb Judge

In Calgary, there is a most unusual event occurring. An inquiry is being held to determine whether or not a judge should be allowed to continue to hear cases. This judge, during a rape trial made a few grossly inappropriate comments to the victim including  "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?" (CBC).The inquiry is unusual in that there have only been two other cases where judges have been judged by their peers as to whether or not they are fit to be judges.

The fact that the judge made the above comment clearly indicates that his thinking is out of step with both the law and what many Canadians think. The law is clear: All that a woman needs to do to prevent rape is to say "no". For the judge to suggest anything else should immediately disqualify him for passing judgements on others. On the other hand.................

I must confess I have a tiny little bit of empathy for the judge. I don't agree with him. He should have known better but I think it is fair to say that what is allowable and not allowable in terms of sexual conduct between two adults is a bit of a moving target. The evolution of thought as to how two people should relate to each other, specifically sexually, has in the past thirty years changed in profound ways. It clearly has a long way still to go. Those values are constantly shifting - moving one would hope to a point where no one would ever feel coerced to do anything they did not want to do. But unfortunately the language and the message is not always as clear as it apparently needs to be.

The question that occasionally floats through the back of my mind is how does one know that know consent is freely given? There was a time, not that long ago, when consent was implied if the other person did not say no. We are, at least in some courts, thankfully well past that point. It is no longer enough for a person to assume that a kiss or a nice meal in a restaurant means consent for anything else. It is accepted (I hope) by many/most that partners need to validate the consent throughout at least the initial stages of a relationship. And that at any time when either of the individuals expresses discomfort or concern, the other must stop. The "no" does not even have to be explicit. I think that is clear. But my question is - in a society that is still overwhelmingly patriarchal, where power relationships are unequal, where advertisers  target the genders differently, where the expectations of behaviour and dress are clearly different - are women comfortable in saying no? Do they know that they can?

Supporting my concern is a MIT 2014 survey in which it was reported in the New York Times that       

" Large numbers of undergraduates, male and female, also agreed with statements suggesting that blame for the assault did not always rest exclusively with the aggressor. Two-thirds agreed that “rape and sexual assault can happen unintentionally, especially if alcohol is involved”; one-third said it can happen “because men get carried away”; about one in five said it often happened because the victim was not clear enough about refusing; and a similar number said   that a drunk victim was “at least somewhat responsible.”

MIT is a university full of some of the brightest young people in the USA. It is scary that they could think that the victim is at least partially responsible. As some women continue to rightly place the responsibility onto men to listen to what their partners are saying and to respond to it, other women appear to be still looking for excuses to explain men's assaultive behaviours. As long as they do so - men will use those excuses both be legitimately confused and to justify their behaviours. Unfortunately people in positions  of power such as the above judge will continue to say dumb things.

Labour Day and Our National Parks

Today is Labour Day. For many Canadians, this national holiday is just the last long weekend of the summer, for others having the first Monday of September off is a chance to catch their breath and to get ready for the start of school, fall recreation programs and the cold weather that is coming. For those who have to work, the national holiday is simply a chance to get paid time and a half. Relatively few Canadians are aware that Labour Day is a Canadian invention and that it has its roots in a strike by the Toronto Typographical Union's 1872 strike demanding a 58 ( no - that is not a typo) hour work week. Twenty seven other unions joined the protest. At a parade in April, 10,000 people marched in support of the strike. There were numerous arrest but eventually the government of the day both revoked some of the more oppressive labour laws and changed the number of hours in a work week. Far too many of us forget that some of our grandfathers and great grand fathers marched and in some cases put their lives on the line so that we might have protection from unscrupulous employers.

By coincidence I have been reading a book by Bill Waiser, a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan called Park Prisoners - The Untold Story of Western Canada's Parks, 1915-1946. Unfortunately but perhaps not surprisingly it is a bit dry, lacking in human interest stories. None-the-less it is fascinating read in that it discusses in some detail the history of how the infrastructure of some of our best known national parks in Canada got built.

During WWl there were a number of foreign nationals (people who had come to Canada to work and to live but were from countries that were allied with Germany) were interred into labour camps and forced to, under very harsh conditions, to clear bush and to build roads within the national parks. There was no indication that these men were a risk to the Canadian government. They were interred for the simple reason that they appeared to be not quite the same as others.  Some of the language of their Anglo-Saxon peers demanding that they be locked away is reminiscent of the language used by Mr. Trump and his supporters when discussing either Muslims or Hispanic/Americans.

 A decade and half later, during the Depression the Government of Canada re-instituted the program. On the surface, it seemed like a win-win proposal. The national parks would get some desperately needed work done and men who were unemployed would get the chance to work and to do something useful. In reality for many men, especially the single men who were supervised by the Department of National Defence, it was a horrendous experience. The men had very little choice. If they chose to not work in the parks, they lost the right to get welfare. The conditions in the camps (again specifically the DND camps) was horrendous with men initially spending part of the winter months in tents insulated by bales of hay. The clothing they were offered was inadequate, the food frequently insufficient and the work was physically demanding (for example - clearing a road from Golden to Revelstoke mainly by manual labour and hand tools).  While the program was successful in that a number of structures and roads were built (and are still being used today), it is clear that program's main emphasis was to get the single men out of the large cities were they were both draining the financial resources of the municipalities and talking to each other about the need to protest the lack of jobs and opportunities. The government did not want people to get together and to organize. The spectre of workers overthrowing the government as they had done in 1917 in Russia was still far too fresh in the minds of politicians and capitalists. Sending them all to remote camps seemed like an ideal solution.

It didn't work. The men did go on strike in the camps, they did talk about the need to organize and to in some cases overthrow the government. The On to Ottawa Trek and the subsequent riots in Regina in 1935 had its genesis in the labour camps on the West Coast. While neither of those two events closed down the labour camps directly, the next federal election saw the Conservative Government lose its power to the Liberals who did close down the program.

Canadian labour history is full of successful protest/strikes that changed how the companies interacted with their employees. Those changes affect how we in 2016 live. The number of hours we work each week, the conditions of employment in terms of safety, how many holidays we get and what protections we have under law to ensure that we are treated fairly are all there because someone fought for them, because someone thought it was important enough to risk something to get them.

We forget, at our peril, the hard work done by those who fought for us. As important to some people as are the sacrifices soldiers make on behalf their country, the sacrifices made by union members are equally as important. Virtually all of our employment rights are ours because someone fought for them.

We should, at least once a year, take a few minutes to give thanks.