Donkey Riding (And now for something completely different...some local news)

The forthcoming semester at the University of Toronto promises not to pass without controversy

The Soviet Union may have collapsed, but communist ideology is still alive and well on North American campuses. My school is no exception. A news bulletin sent out by the Students' Adminstrative Council (SAC) of the University of Toronto highlights an upcoming event, the annual Xpression Against Oppression Week, which will focus this year on the Make Poverty History campaign. In their bulletin, SAC boasts about the riveting key note speaker that they have secured for the event: rogue British Parliamentarian, George Galloway.

Galloway, who formed the socialist RESPECT The Unity Coalition after getting booted out of the Labour party, was quoted in 2002 by The Guardian, "If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life." He has also been quoted as saying of Fidel Castro's Cuba that it is a "remarkable society" and "a model for the world."

Somehow, SAC thinks it is a good idea to invite someone who thinks very highly of communist Cuba (where oxen, donkeys and mules are about as common on the roads as automobiles) to be the key note speaker of an event aimed at ending world poverty. How ironic then, that SAC's major campaign to get cheaper Toronto Transit Commision (TTC) metropasses would likely be rendered useless if we were to follow any of Galloways advice since the TTC would have end up having to trade in its buses for some farm animals. How ironic also, that the event is being funded by students' tuition money, whether they agree to it or not.

The Ridiculousness Festers

Pierre Vallières: "Not only should Martinique proceed to independence, but to revolution - as Quebec should as well!"
Michaëlle Jean: "Yes, independence isn't given, it's taken."

The day that Paul Martin introduced Michaëlle Jean as the next Governor General of Canada, I started (but never finished) writing a blog entry entitled "Uninformed Criticism". In it, I criticized the appointment, not because I had anything unkind to say about Jean, but rather because I knew absolutely nothing about her. It is unfortunate that this is the way things are done in Canada; appointments of all kinds are made by decree from the Prime Minister's office. Here, public scrutiny of appointees amounts to little more than whining about the inevitable. It is a far cry from the rigourous approval process of nominees that must be undertaken in the United States, such as the current one taking place with George Bush's nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Conner on the supreme court.

My dismay at the lack of due process has proven to be completely justified in this case. The quotation at the opening of this blog entry is taken from a 1991 documentry called La Manière Nègre, a film made by Jean's sovereigntist-supporting husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond. The scene depicted shows Jean with a room full of prominent Quebec seperatists toasting to Quebec's independence. But it's worse than that. The woman appointed as Canada's ceremonial head of state has not just been associated with any plain old Quebec seperatists; according to the sovereigntist newspaper, Le Quebecois, "It is now clear that it's the couple [Jean and Lafond] that has long maintained relationships with FLQ members..." FLQ (Front de Libération du Quebec) is the terrorist group that forced then-prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau to use the War Measures Act to impose martial law in 1970. Pierre Vallières, one of the sovereigntists toasting in the documentary, is himself a founding member of the group. Jean's husband, Lafond, also collaborated on a 1994 National Film Board documentary with convicted FLQ terrorist, Francis Simard. Another member, Jacques Rose, who was implicated as an accessory after the fact in the FLQ kidnapping and murder of Quebec Transport Minister Pierre Laporte, built a book shelf in Jean and Lafonde's home.

All of this took me completely by surprise. Even without due process, I had assumed the Paul Martin would at the very least select someone who was undeniably a federalist. That he not only chose someone whose loyalty to Canada is suspect, but that he chose someone with ties to individuals who have violently opposed Canada's existence in its present form, is simply baffling.

What could Martin's motivations have possibly been? Maybe he felt that the Liberals needed a new gaffe to spice up the news while Parliament is on vacation. Maybe the background checks supposedly performed by CSIS and the RCMP weren't quite as thorough as the PMO would have you believe. Or maybe the motive was to degrade the Governor General's office so that it would be too feeble to intervene in any constitutional crises like the confidence crisis of May of this year.

This is all wild speculation, of course. But with the Liberal circus still in town, I'm left guessing.