Toronto’s Public Housing System Easy To Scam On Human Rights Grounds

[Toronto Sun] Shoot a gun, deal drugs or assault a neighbour and your days in Toronto’s public housing should be over.

“The truth is, nothing can be further from the truth,” Harry Fine, a former adjudicator on the provincial body that resolves disputes between landlords and tenants, tells the Sunday Sun.

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In Wolch vs Walmer Developments, the Divisional Court overturned an Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal decision that evicted the tenant for a series of illegal acts.

On review, the Court found that landlords are subject to the Human Rights Code, as is the Tribunal, in making findings, and handed out discretionary relief from eviction.

Fine says it’s the “pervasive over-application” of that decision that has led to a farcical situation whereby it’s often enough for a tenant to claim to have depression or anxiety in order to avoid eviction.

The rest.

Toronto Star Columnist: “Reasonable Limits” Needed For Free Speech

Sounds great. And we will keep holding out breaths until someone tells us a) who decides the definition of “reasonable,” and b) what that definition will be. Still waiting…and waiting…and waiting… 

Canada has followed a different path on free speech than the United States, where there are no anti-hate laws because the U.S. Bill of Rights says “Congress shall make no laws … abridging freedom of speech or of the press.”

The Canadian Charter of Rights, too, guarantees “freedom of the press,” but it places “reasonable limits” on it. That’s why the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the anti-hate provisions of both the Criminal Code and human rights statutes.

The rest.

UK Charity: Female Babies Disappearing From India

Increasing numbers of baby girls in India are either being aborted in the womb or fatally neglected, a British charity alleges. 

ActionAid said in a report that the number of baby girls in India has reached a record low due to the country’s alleged cultural practice of favoring boys over girls, the BBC reported Saturday.

The group’s “Disappearing Daughters” report says in the Indian state of Punjab, there currently are only 300 female children for every 1,000 male children born to high caste families.

The rest.

Another Entry For The Newspeak Dictionary

Old entries: “Illegal aliens” and “Immigrants.” New entry: “Migrants.”

Always fun listening to the human rights crowd talk about immigration. It’s not, “Change the country that’s treating people like crap.” It’s “Crap on the countries that don’t open the floodgates.”

[Democracy Now interview with Joseph Nevins, university prof and immigration guru]

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to hear from one of them in a few minutes, but I wanted to ask first your use of language. You qualify what you write at the beginning of your book. 

JOSEPH NEVINS: Mm-hmm. Well, one of the terms that we often hear is this term “illegal,” right? “Illegal alien,” or something like that. And this is a term that has been created by national governments as a way of criminalizing what I see and many members of the international human rights community and migrant rights community see as a basic human right—the right to migrate—if we take international human rights conventions seriously.

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Cool! Border checks and passports are human rights violations. We’re going to migrate to Capri.

JOSEPH NEVINS: In order to access the resources necessary to realize those rights, they need to migrate. If you deny them the right to migrate, you’re effectively denying them the right to have those rights, right? So in that sense, international human rights becomes meaningless, if we don’t have a right to migrate.

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Sorry, one more: “climate change refugees.” You might be interested in this one because it’ll cost you a ton of cash. First, to pay for housing the climate change refugees. Second, for keeping the NGOs and activists stocked with fresh crackpipes.

[National Post] A growing movement of academics, NGOs and activists insist that industrialized nations owe the displaced some form of restitution, either in the form of aid or a kind of human offsetting, in which major carbon-producing nations would accept these so-called refugees.

Taken to the extreme, the scenario would have massive global implications: Citing greenhouse gases as a cause, a UN agency last year estimated that there are already 25 million people who have moved as a result of environmental degradation; other agencies warn the number could climb as high as 200 million in the next 50 years. Victims displaced by drought, starvation or crop failure could claim this kind of refugee status, even if government corruption or incompetence — not global warming –led to their plight.