Ever since the current government made their staggering cuts to arts funding, Stephen Harper has claimed that the Conservatives spend more on the arts than the Liberals did. “Really?,” everyone asked. “Sure,” said Harper, “I even have my grade 9 in piano!”

The problem with making those kind of claims is that it’s really hard to know for sure. Thanks to a soon-to-be published report from the Canadian Conference of the Arts (and some excellent journalism by James Bradshaw at the Globe and Mail) we now know for sure that Stephen Harper is a big fat liar. About the funding, that is; I have heard nothing about his skill as a pianist.

Anyway, so the reason Harper is a liar is because he said that the Cons spent more on arts funding than the Libs. If he had said they spent more on culture funding than the Libs, he might have gotten a pass—though Bradshaw points out that the Cons are taking undue credit for a large boost to culture funding that occured in their first year in power, fiscally speaking.

“Culture” is the responsibility of the Department of Canadian Heritage. It includes things that you and I would consider to be arts (visual art, music, film, television, radio, dance, etc.) and some things that fall better into the vague category of culture (sports, national identity building, official language initiatives). The former category is called SO1 and the latter SO2.

The report shows that since 2006-07, funding for SO1 has fallen from $817-million to $759-million. However, funding for SO2 increased from $567.7-million in 2006-07 to $631.6-million in 2008-09. And that’s not even including the $45-million from the recently axed SO1 programs (see list here) that is being shifted to SO2 programs (like the Olympics). So there you have it: arts funding is not increasing under a Conservative government. It is decreasing dramatically.

“Such a revelation certainly hints at a targeted approach to arts cuts, which would contradict the government’s assertions that programs were axed based on simple efficiency reviews – and without ideological motivation,” says Bradshaw. Targeted indeed. The Cons have have been openly hostile toward the arts and artists, ever since they circulated a memo that denounced “wealthy celebrities”, “fringe arts groups” and “highly ideological individuals” with “agendas” who inflict “offensive material” on the decent Canadian public. In an open letter to the Prime Minister, playwright-director Wajdi Mouawad says that Harper has symbolically “declared war on the artists”:

Your silence and your actions make one fear the worst for, in the end, we are quite struck by the belief that this contempt, made eloquent by your budget cuts, is very real and that you feel nothing but disgust for these people, these artists, who spend their time by wasting it and in spending the good taxpayers money, he who, rather than doing uplifting work, can only toil.

And so the harsh charictarization of the arts by the Conservative government continues. It’s arts vs. culture; SO1 vs. SO2; lazy, condescending artists vs. salt-of-the-earth taxpayers; offensive material vs. uplifting material; city-dwellers vs. everyone else; shiraz vs. Lucky lager.

It’s obvious to anyone but the teetotallers that sometimes you like to throw back a cold one and sometimes you like to shop in the LCBO Vintages section. Too many cold ones makes you stupid, and too many bottles of Bordeaux make you broke. The important thing is finding a balance, and Stephen Harper wants to throw a kegger.

I am bad at metaphors.

X-posted to Say It With Pie.

THE TORIES “WIN” THE CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTION IF: They get a majority. That is the goal, pure and simple, and the only way they get an unqualified victory is if they get a majority. This is because financial indicators for the near future are frankly really bad (even with the Canadian banks having more of a hedge against the financial maelstrom forthcoming everywhere else than most other countries’ banks). If the Tories don’t get a majority government, they’ll be stuck with another minority, and then the Liberals will, at their leisure, force an election when they’re stronger and when the Tories are weaker thanks to being in charge during bad times. If the Tories get a majority, they can hope to ride out the next four years and maybe things don’t suck by the end. If they don’t, they’re in trouble, and everybody knows it. Of course, that’s why they called the election now; they’re trying to wring the most out of their current state of advantage.

THE TORIES “LOSE” THE ELECTION IF: If they don’t see any gains in Ontario. If they don’t see expected gains in Quebec. If their seat count in Parliament doesn’t raise by at least five seats. (Ten to fifteen seats would, given the political facts on the ground, essentially count as a tie.)

THE LIBERALS “WIN” THE ELECTION IF: They don’t collapse. This is the rare moment in Canadian history where the Liberal party could legitimately fall apart for another decade if not longer; they have a leader who is not well liked (although I think Dion gets a bad rap), and no real champion waiting in the wings (Bob Rae? Michael Ignatieff? Zzzzzzz). It is possible (not likely, I think, but certainly possible and not unfeasible) that the Grits could be reduced below 45 seats in this election – a trouncing that bad would put the party in the wilderness for years and shove the NDP forward as a serious alternative for many centre-left Liberal voters.

THE LIBERALS “LOSE” THE ELECTION IF: If they lose a lot of seats to the NDP. If they get cleaned out in Quebec (the nightmare scenario, and not impossible at this point). If their popular support in the Maritimes or Toronto shows signs of seriously fading.

THE NDP “WINS” THE ELECTION IF: They continue their slow-but-steady seat increase as they have over the past few elections. Whatever one can say negatively about Jack Layton (STOP WITH THE FUCKING ROBOCALLS, JACK), you can’t say that he hasn’t pulled the party out of its late-90s doldrums. This time around, the NDP is looking to capitalize on its by-election win in Outremont (its first Quebec victory in, like, ever) with another victory in Gatineau or Hull, and to continue its steady and gradual growth in the Maritimes by taking seats in Newfoundland (where the Tories are stumbling thanks to Danny Williams being a pugnacious asshole). They even have a shot in Oshawa thanks to the auto manufacturing crisis on Ontario. The ideally realistic NDP scenario is a growth of five to ten seats.

THE NDP “LOSES” THE ELECTON IF: Thomas Mulcair is defeated in Outremont; the Liberals steal their expected Maritime seats; NDP ridings that should be more or less locks (like Trinity-Spadina) go Liberal instead.

THE GREEN PARTY “WINS” THE ELECTION IF: Elizabeth May wins her seat in Central Nova. This is their only realistic shot at winning a seat on their own merit, and it is, seriously, put up or shut up time for the Greens. Disaffected voters will only flirt with a fringe party for so long before they expect it to become competitive, and the Greens’ fifteen minutes are almost up.

THE GREEN PARTY “LOSES” THE ELECTION IF: May doesn’t win. Period.

THE BLOC QUEBECOIS “WINS” THE ELECTION IF: They manage to hold back the rising rural Tory tide in Quebec. The Bloc currently have 48 seats; after the election, if they manage to keep more than 40 of them, they’ve done extremely well. And you know they’re desperate; when Gilles Duceppe says he wants to attract federalist votes in Quebec, that’s when the Bloc is in dire straits indeed.

THE BLOC QUEBECOIS “LOSES” THE ELECTION IF: They drop below 30 seats, which would be a drubbing. If they drop below 25, expect to see defections in the ranks. Like the Liberals, this is an election which can potentially send the Bloc into the politicla wilderness; unlike the Liberals, who will always eventually resurrect themselves and take back the reins of power, the Bloc could simply dissolve if things go badly enough.

The Prime Minister’s office has confirmed that on Sunday, Stephen Harper will be delivering his request for an election to the Governor General, election date Oct. 14th.

Should be interesting. I have standing bets with people that the Tories don’t increase their seat count. I hope I’m right.

Shorter Climbing Out Of The Dark:

Alleging something and saying something are two very different things, and this proves that the Globe and Mail is a dirty Commie rag.

Shorter Matthew Siscoe:

Since Al-Qaeda is Sunni and Saddam Hussein was Sunni, it therefore stands to reason that a small, disorganized and mostly loathed band of religious fanatics can achieve exactly the same result as a Western-backed secular strongman starting out from a position of centralized government power.

Shorter Halls of Macadamia:

There was a violent incident in the city yesterday, so this obviously disproves any “statistical evidence” of “dropping crime rates.”

Shorter Right on Course:

An Australian computer programmer with no expertise in climatology said there’s no such thing as global warming in a newspaper devoutly supporting denial of global warming theory, and this gives us cause to re-evaluate carbon taxation.

Shorter Celestial Junk:

A progressive is anybody I don’t like.

“Shorter” concept invented by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all internet traditions.

To the fine folks of Muslims Against Sharia (located in the well-known Islamic enclave of Omaha, Nebraska – not that I am questioning their Islamic credentials, because god knows if there’s one thing moderate Muslims like doing, it’s defending Michael Savage). They’ve seen fit to issue a drive-by comment, reprimanding all of us who might believe that Omar Khadr be given such trivialities as “due process” and “an actual trial.”

And yes, it is a shame that Sgt. Christopher Speer was killed in Afghanistan. I mean, sure, the “eyewitness” accounts of Omar Khadr killing Sgt. Speer with a grenade might have been tampered with and were uncertain in the first place, but we know that Khadr’s father was definitively a bad person and most of his family aren’t pleasant either, so it’s obvious that he too is a bad person. It’s genetics, you see.

So welcome, Muslims (Definitely Not White Conservatives, Actual Muslims) Against Sharia! We hope you have a lot of fun here.

Regular readers will know full well that I have no love for Stephen Harper, considering him a feckless, short-sighted and generally mean-spirited individual. His stance on the repatriation of Omar Khadr does nothing to change this opinion.

Let us recap: Omar Khadr was arrested as a child soldier in the Afghanistan war when he was fifteen. International commitments signed by both Canada and the United States recognize that individuals below the age of eighteen cannot be legally considered “soldiers,” and even if you ignore the optional protocol that was signed in 2002 (and is thus a binding commitment on both countries) Khadr would still be toeing the line of the 15-year-old age limit for child soldiers. But he’s still in Guantanamo.

His lawyers have shown that evidence against him – specifically the evidence responsible for his charge of killing a soldier with a grenade – has been altered after the fact. The Pentagon itself has accidentally released conflicting evidence. But he’s still in Guantanamo.

We know that Khadr has been subjected to extended sleep deprivation. Extended sleep deprivation is torture – it deliberately and systematically breaks down a person’s mental health, forcing them into a state akin to psychosis. But he’s still in Guantanamo.

And Stephen Harper’s defense for allowing this to continue? “The previous government took a whole range, all of the information into account when they made the decision on how to proceed with the Khadr case several years ago.” Yes, Stephen Harper’s argument is that the Liberals didn’t do anything when they were in office. By this logic, of course, no elected official can ever do anything about a situation that began before they took office. It’s idiotic and cowardly, which coming from Stephen Harper should prove no surprise.

But one more point:

“Harper added that Canada: “frankly, has no real alternative” to the U.S. legal process. “

This is a lie. Plainly and simply, it is a lie. We know this because Omar Khadr is the sole remaining prisoner in Guantanamo who is a citizen of a Western country. The Brits and the Aussies have already removed their citizens and dealt with them as they see fit. Canada has “no real alternative” because its Prime Minister doesn’t want there to be an alternative.

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.