The Liberal Party released their carbon taxation plan today, and I’d say it’s… okay. It does a lot of what a carbon taxation scheme should, of course, but it misses two major points.

Firstly, there’s no tax on gasoline. I understand that gasoline taxes are unpopular, but the lack of a gas tax in a carbon taxation plan when you are taxing literally every other fossil fuel seems like staggering pandering to me. I don’t even think a gas tax is unsellable - say “look, we’re going to tax gas, yes, but the gas taxes are going to be specifically redirected into a fund to improve public transportation so that in five years you can take a hybrid bus from Chilliwack to the Bay of Fundy or from your home to your grandma’s back yard.” The longer you let people think that their old lifestyles are sustainable - and they just aren’t - the harder it’s going to be to tell them the truth.

Secondly, the tax is revenue-neutral, erring on the side of costing a bit of money. I understand that the Liberals want to make carbon taxation as painless as possible by lowering income taxes at the same time. But this idea is flawed for two reasons:

1.) We desperately need massive energy infrastructure investment. Canada has too much oil power generation as it is; we need to replace that with solar, tidal and wind ASAP, and additional revenues created by a carbon tax in the short term could help fund these initiatives.

2.) Carbon taxation in the short run is revenue neutral, but in the long run it is presumably revenue-lowering because given time everybody will find ecological ways to avoid paying the tax. Which is good, but that means eventually you have to jack income taxes back up to compensate. I don’t look forward to the squabbling when that happens.

Still, on the whole, it’s an all-right plan, a solid B+ effort. Could have been much, much worse.

Also: 350.

Scott asked me for my take on the new Canadian DMCA (and make no mistake, that’s what it is).

Most people know I tend to be somewhat “copyleft” when it comes to my attitudes on copyright; I favour lower terms of private ownership of copyright for a larger public domain, flexible and relatively wide-ranging fair dealing laws, and legal systems that encourage trial use rather than full immediate purchase of intellectual property. Canadian statutory law contains no protections under fair dealing for parody or transformative use; the protections that exist for me when I use Photoshop to make Iron Man say “fuck” exist solely in jurisprudence, and every serious intellectual property law expert in the country has recommended to a number of governments that, hey, maybe we should enshrine that in statute.

Needless to say, Jim Prentice’s bill does none of these things. Michael Geist has already explained at length how the expansions for fair dealing contained within the bill (and fair dealing in general) are almost wholly nullified by the digital lock provisions. This bill makes most fair dealing illegal simply by having the original producer of content put a basic digital lock or DRM on their material. (Or, more simply, your right to make a copy of a song on a CD that you own ends the moment the CD has a simple DRM on it. The tools to evade that DRM? Illegal as of this bill.)

In short it’s a terrible, terrible bill - a sellout to American lobbyists that completely ignores all the effort Canadian citizens made earlier this year to say “hey, this is a shitty bill and we don’t want it.” With any luck, it will be voted down in Parliament. (Of course, the Harper government may go ahead and make it a confidence vote, in which case Stephane Dion will likely run from his own shadow.

Michael Geist has more, of course.

So, the Tories managed to pass Bill C-50, the new immigration law bill, yesterday. Nobody outside of the Tories thinks this is a good bill; it doesn’t really do what it aims to do (increase skilled worker immigration to Canada), and it directly impedes reunion of immigrant families, which nobody thinks is a good idea outside of diehard nativists.

Canada’s immigration laws have problems, of course - the most notorious being the fact that wait times for immigration review are horrendous. Of course, the Immigration and Refugee Board is 35 percent unstaffed, and they directly attribute the largest part of wait times to that fact in their report on the matter, and you’d think that if the Tories were serious about improving immigration they’d appoint new people to the Board.

But this isn’t about improving immigration; it’s the same as everything the Tories do, which is to rubberstamp their vision of what Canada should be through legislation, be it “family-friendly” filmmaking backdoored into Bill C-10 or reopening the legal status of the fetus with Bill C-484. Now, if Canadians had actually voted the Tories into a majority government, I would be angry, but I’d have less cause to gripe; if Canadians desperately wanted the Tory way, that’s how democracies work.

But these bills aren’t passing because the Tories have a majority government. Because the Tories have a minority government. These bills are passing because the Liberal Party is abstaining on every single goddamned vote that has the potential to be even slightly contentious. This is because Stephane Dion is in charge of the party, and Stephane Dion is playing chickenshit politics. Every contentious vote becomes the same question: “can Stephane Dion win an election?”

And the answer given is always “no,” even though Dion - probably the least liked Liberal party leader of the last, oh, fifty years or so - at the helm of the Liberal party puts the Grits only three points behind the Tories in countrywide polling right now. It’s a death spiral, because every time Stephane Dion refuses to fight the Tories on a contentious vote, the public becomes increasingly more convinced that he can’t lead the country. Which is fair, because if you don’t think you can take on a dink like Stephen Harper, what the hell business do you have trying to run a nation?

At this point I think the Liberals have to pull the emergency play: boot Dion, put in an interim party leader that would scare the shit out of Tories trying to call an election while the Liberals are getting organized (Gerard Kennedy or Ken Dryden are good candidates in this regard), and then have their convention and immediately challenge the Tories, who honestly aren’t that popular at all any more in Quebec and whose support elsewhere in Canada outside of Alberta is mostly soft and due to Dion’s immense wimpiness as a party leader. (I’m already hearing from friends within the low levels of the Liberal party infrastructure that this plan is gaining popularity rapidly in the ranks; the MPs want to fight the Tories on these stupid bills and Dion won’t let them.)

Because right now it’s just Dion getting the bad press; soon, though, it’ll be the Liberals’ fault for letting Dion walk them down the path to electoral suicide, and then it’s real trouble.

Another week, another posting from me at The Court - this week is a critique of the recent ruling in Canada v. Khadr, which should be of interest to some of my American audience, seeing as how it concerns a Guantanamo Bay detainee.

Cory Morgan, author of yesterday’s aforementioned witless post about being opposed to funding gender reassignment surgery, has responded in similarly witless fashion. Suffice it to say he starts off with a reference to Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons - fresh and original! - then goes into a comparison between transsexuals and comic book fans which I am sure had his blog audience rolling in the aisles, except all the comments I see on it seem to be from people I know found him through me and they aren’t so much his audience as they are a newfound crop of antagonists. Although I’m fairly sure he’s happy to get any attention he can manage.

But I don’t really care about his insults about being a comic book fan (OH NOES, THE RIGHTY BLOGGER SEZ I AM A SEXLESS NERD, MY LIFE, IT IS LAID BARE). What I do want to briefly take issue with is this:

A line gets crossed when one is asking me as a taxpayer to fund their pursuits however. I do not and never will support public funding for surgery that simply is not medically required.

Gender reassignment surgery - even in private care situations - is not handed out willy-nilly because of the enormous liability issues it presents (and it is right and proper that those liability issues exist for such a serious, life-altering elective procedure). That’s why there are only eight to ten surgeries performed in Ontario per year.

And those surgeries are medically required, the same as pharmaceutical therapy is often required for those with mental health issues. Does Cory Morgan take issue with poor people being prescribed anti-schizophrenic medication? Anti-depressants? Mood stabilizers? After all, it’s entirely possible for people to function - for a given definition of “function” that is not very functional, but oh well - without those drugs, which artificially alter one’s neurochemistry to an extent that the differences between it and surgery are merely semantic.

They will just be, at the very least, chronically unhappy, anxious, and depressed. But they’ll be alive!

And transgenderism isn’t simply a mental health disorder. Know how I know that? Because we used to classify it as one, and tried to “cure” transsexuals of wanting to be a different gender, and it didn’t work. It simply resulted in greater anxiety and depression, and their psychological costs fiscally outstripped many times over what the surgery would have cost. Where gender reassignment surgery is necessary - and, again, it is worth noting that it is only necessary in a tiny number of cases - it is considered so because it is the best way to ensure that the patient enjoys the maximum and highest quality of life that is available to them, the best way to reduce their suffering and anguish to a minimum.

I would further note that my experience in this area is far from academic, because a friend of mine is transgender. She (male-to-female transsexual) actually works at one of the comics shops I frequent, which I am sure would make Cory giggle over his comparison once more. (Although I’m pretty sure she gets laid more than he does, and also has better clothing sense for that matter.) I’ve known her long enough that I knew her when she was still using her male name reluctantly, because she was scared of how people might react if she used her chosen female name, and when I confirmed by asking her if she was transgender, I said “so why didn’t use just tell me to call you (female name)?” and her expression was visibly relieved.

That relief is something for which that people should not have to work. That is why gender reassignment surgery is indeed medically necessary in certain cases. People deserve the right to feel comfortable in their own skin, and if medical intervention is necessary, then so be it.

So last week here in Ontario, the Health Minister announced that sex-reassignment surgery would once again be covered by our public health system, ten years after the Mike Harris Tory government delisted it and forced the required procedures into private care.

For my money, this is unequivocally a good thing. People in need of gender assignment are rare (the estimated need for these surgeries in Ontario, a province of thirteen million people, is eight to ten surgeries annually), but differing gender identity is a tragic and indeed horrifying condition. I don’t mean “horrifying” as in “disgusting,” but in that the idea of having to live one’s life knowing - not believing, knowing - that your body and entire identity are both completely flawed is one that is both thankfully alien and exceptionally terrifying to me. I am enormously grateful that my gender identity as a dude is secure and that I never, ever have to worry about deep down feelings that I shouldn’t have a dick.

But of course, there are always going to be assholes. This is nothing new. But what gets me - what really just fucking gets me - is that these juvenile fuckwits can’t just go ahead and say, straight up, “we’re bigots.” They can’t just say “you know what, I fucking disapprove of gender reassignment surgery. I think transgenderism is bullshit and people who need sex change operations are crazy.”

You know why they don’t say that? They don’t say it because they are goddamned chickenshits.

Consider the enormously stupid Cory Morgan, who prefaces his photo-essay on how he will chop a guy’s dick off for $200 (of course, there’s no question of what he does for a female-to-male transsexual - I mean, you’d think he’d come up with some amusing photo-essay involving a series of dildos! Such stunning lack of work ethic) by attempting to justify his dislike of publicly funded gender reassignment surgery on fiscal grounds:

it has been pointed out that the de-bonings will only cost around $20,000 each. That must be comforting to people dying on waiting lists in Canada’s increasingly unsustainable socialized healthcare system. I would hate to be the nurse who has to explain to somebody; “I am sorry sir, we will have to delay your bypass surgery a little longer, the operating room is occupied by a man getting his weiner removed.”

Now, first off, 10 surgeries at about $20K each is a whopping $200K per year cost to the taxpayers of Ontario, and out of the approximately $34 billion Ontario spends on health care yearly represents a staggering .0000006% percent of the total budget. Compare to the estimated $1.8 billion dollars that the province spends treating smoking-related illnesses and it seems like kind of a bargain! And, of course, Cory overlooks that performing a gender reassignment surgery requires a highly specialized reproductive surgeon, who probably isn’t going to be doing any heart surgery any time soon.

Kathy Shaidle, on the other hand, justifies her complaining about “fake twats” by first snidely mentioning that Health Minister George Smitherman is TEH GHEY, then making an appeal-to-authority argument, linking to Paul McHugh. Paul McHugh, for those not aware, has essentially kept his psychological career alive despite completely disagreeing with any treatment or diagnosis made after 1970 by becoming the poster boy for dipshits like Kathy to link to. “HE WORKS AT JOHNS HOPKINS!” they scream. Which is true. In fact, he worked at Johns Hopkins when he decided not to reveal the identities of confessed child molesters to the police and concealed incidences of child rape. But, what the heck, it was only child rape!

Shaidle and Morgan are of course both blitheringly stupid and evidence of the continuing Americanization of Canada’s extreme right wing, but it’s worse than that; they’re simply unwilling to come right out and say “we don’t like transgenderism.” Shaidle, ironically, followed up her weaselly little slam by posting once more about Mark Steyn and the horrible injustice he suffers from having people say he’s a fucking bigot. She’ll complain endlessly about how free speech is quashed in Canada, but she’s not exactly eager to get up and engage in it by saying what she really, really wants to say.

Because, again: they’re chickenshits.

Via Karen, this is a pretty concise - and amusing - background and explanation of the recent transit strike in Toronto.