Eideard

Infant moose, born on the front lawn, in downtown Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

Thanks, Cinaedh

An Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled that the federal medical marijuana program is unconstitutional, giving the government three months to fix the problem before pot is effectively legalized.

In an April 11 ruling, Justice Donald Taliano found that doctors across the country have “massively boycotted” the medical marijuana program and largely refuse to sign off on forms giving sick people access to necessary medication. As a result, legitimately sick people cannot access medical marijuana through appropriate means and must resort to illegal actions…

The judge’s decision comes in a criminal case involving Matthew Mernagh, 37, of St. Catharines who suffers from fibromyalgia, scoliosis, seizures and depression.

Marijuana is the most effective treatment of Mernagh’s pain. But despite years of effort, he has been unable to find a doctor to support his application for a medical marijuana licence. Mernagh resorted to growing his own cannabis and was charged with producing the drug.

Taliano found doctors essentially act as gatekeepers to the medical marijuana program but lack the necessary knowledge to adequately give advice or recommend the drug. He also found that Health Canada has made “no real attempt to deal with this lack of knowledge…”

“The body of evidence from Mr. Mernagh and the other patient witnesses is troubling,” Taliano wrote. “The evidence of the patient witnesses, which I accept, showed that patients have to go to extraordinary lengths to acquire the marijuana they need.”

Lawyer Alan Young, a longtime advocate of marijuana legalization, said the ruling is a step in the right direction.

“It’s significant because it’s a Superior Court ruling which has binding effect across the province,” Young said.

“By enacting a dysfunctional medical program the government now has to pay the high cost of losing the constitutional authority to criminalize marijuana.”

Surprising to me that there isn’t even a significant minority of physicians in Canada with the gumption to support medical marijuana programs. Silly statements about insufficient evidence means they’re only reading their own studies. In the United States, in Europe, there are beaucoup studies from reputable peer-reviewed sources that support a range of symptoms and syndromes that are ameliorated by cannabis.

Meanwhile, as Alan Young said, the ruling has put the government in the situation of having no Plan B to deal with rejection of their outdated laws.

Ontario’s highest court has set out a framework allowing judges to decide on a case-by-case basis if women can wear religious head coverings that obscure their faces while testifying.

The Ontario Court of Appeal also lays down the bottom line on the issue: “If, in the specific circumstances, the accused’s fair trial right can be honoured only by requiring the witness to remove the niqab, the niqab must be removed if the witness is to testify.”

His right to a fair trial trumps her right to religious expression.

In essence, the 3-0 decision written by Justice David Doherty and handed down Wednesday, kicks the controversial issue back to the domain of lower court judges, who must now consider the question with the aid of legal points laid out at the appeal court. This marks the first time the issue has been dealt with by a Canadian court of appeal.

The decision stems from a historical sexual assault case in which the alleged victim, a Muslim woman, wanted to wear her niqab while testifying at a preliminary hearing two years ago. The covering shows only her eyes…

The judge presiding over the preliminary hearing ruled the woman must remove her niqab. She appealed and the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed the judge’s earlier decision. That means the preliminary hearing judge must now make a new decision regarding the niqab, taking into account the legal considerations provided by the higher court.

The right of an accused to confront their accuser is a keystone of Western jurisprudence. Not that our governments respect the practice anymore than those who would prefer religion to overrule access to a fair trial.

Not entirely unique; but, a great example of why term limits are undemocratic. Term limits in Mississauga would have deprived the voters of an opportunity to continue the service of that rarest of politicians – one dedicated to improving community life.

True, the typical political hack stays in business catering to bigotry or society’s obsession with the ethics of beancounters. Whether it’s a Strom Thurmond kept in office as a spokesman for Southern Racism or a John McCain who yammers every year about how he’s saving taxpayers money by keeping some town – outside of Arizona – from educating too many kids.

But, there is a great history in North American politics of people like Hazel McCallion – Claude Pepper from Florida or the Udall family in the American Southwest – dedicated to public service and keeping the needs of us ordinary citizens at the top of the list.

More power to you, Hazel. Rock on!

Thanks, Cinaedh

Defence Minister Peter MacKay, General Walt Natynczyk – and Williams

The commander of Canada’s largest air force base has been charged with the murder of two women and the sexual assault of two others, police said.

Col Russell Williams, 46, appeared in court a day after his arrest. He was held in custody…One woman was found dead in her house in November and the other was reported missing 11 days ago.

He was charged with the first-degree murder of Jessica Lloyd, 27, a resident of Belleville, Ontario. She was reported missing on 28 January and her body was found on Monday, police said.

He was also charged with the murder of Marie Comeau, a 38-year-old corporal found dead in November at her home in Brighton, Ontario.

Authorities…linked the two murders to one suspect on the basis of similarities between the cases, and did not expect to make any more arrests, police said…

“We are certainly tracking the movements of where this man has been over the past several years and we’re continuing with our investigation,” Det Insp Nicholas said.

The Chief of the Air Staff, Lt Gen Andre Deschamps, said an interim commander would be appointed, pending the outcome of the trial.

What? Did you think they would keep him on with some sort of work-release program?

And a special Bravo! for good, old-fashioned police work. RTFA.

A 16-year-old Ontario, Canada, boy returned home after two days allegedly spent with a 42-year-old fellow online gamer he called his “soulmate,” police said.

After Andrew Kane met Texas mother of four Lauri Price while playing World of Warcraft, they developed an online relationship, leading to Price flying from Houston to Toronto to meet the boy, The Globe and Mail reported Friday.

Tuesday night Kane had asked his parents to drive him to a nearby hotel where he was to meet Price, and dumbfounded, they refused. He left at 2 a.m. local time and disappeared for two days, leaving his parents pleading with him via computer to return.

Then they started reading his chats with the woman, which had begun more than a year ago. They showed the chats to the police, they said.

“All they had to do was read the chat logs and they were immediately concerned,” Kane said of her son’s relationship with the woman. “He said she was his soulmate.”

Price left a note to his parents when he left, reading, “I don’t know how to explain it to you, but this will show you not only the commitment we have to each other, but also that your fears of her are ill-found.”

Sgt. Robert Allan of the Barrie police said Kane and Price had gone to Orillia, Ontario. Price will not face criminal charges, the newspaper said.

Well, there’s soulmates and then there’s soulmates. Local ordinances apply.

What good comes from mandatory vaccines, eh?

We all know that influenza vaccination helps prevent disease, but a new study from Canada suggests it may also prevent another public health problem: inappropriate antibiotic use. The findings come from a new study in the September 1, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Disease, which is now available online.

Starting in 2000, the Canadian province of Ontario introduced a universal immunization program offering free influenza vaccines to anyone 6 months of age or older. Other provinces continued to target only high-risk groups and their contacts for vaccination. The authors compared prescription rates for influenza-associated respiratory antibiotics before and after the Ontario program began, and compared the Ontario prescription rates with those of other provinces.

The broader immunization effort in Ontario was associated with a 64 percent decline in these antibiotic prescriptions compared with the other provinces that maintained targeted vaccination programs. Additionally, influenza-associated mortality fell 39 percent. Flu-related hospitalizations, emergency department use, and doctors’ office visits also fell an average of 52 percent.

Influenza and upper respiratory conditions account for a substantial number of antibiotic prescriptions, even though antibiotics don’t work against viruses such as the flu. The overuse of antibiotics and the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to be serious public health problems.

Here I am posting this in the United States where half the wingnuts in the nation still consider vaccination the work of the AntiChrist – and half the remainder think it may be an infringement on their liberty.

Our nation has the sense of science and logic of your average Stone Age sloth.

The premier of the Canadian province of Ontario said he’s fed up with people complaining and stalling alternative energy
projects such as wind farms.

Speaking in London, Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty said the “not in my back yard” attitude “will no longer prevail” and his government is poised to overrule municipalities that balk at renewable energy projects, the Toronto Star reported.

He said such projects as wind and solar panel farms and bio-energy facilities had the potential to create 50,000 jobs in the province, where unemployment stands at 8 percent, the London Free Press reported.

“We need those jobs, we need clean electricity, we need to assume full responsibility in the face of climate change and we are going to do that in Ontario,” McGuinty said. “We can’t allow interests to oppose these, simply because they don’t like them.”

Most of the people who don’t like to look at wind farms are already situated so they needn’t look at poor people or unemployment lines. They don’t worry about who has to pay the bills for outdated energy plans either.

Canada has announced a $3.3 billion bail-out plan to aid two US car manufacturers with operations there. The offer of emergency loans follows the US government’s decision on Friday to provide $17.4bn in loans to help General Motors and Chrysler survive.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it was “a regrettable but necessary step to protect the Canadian economy”.

The amount promised represented the 20% share Canada has in the North American automobile industry, he said.

Mr Harper said there were “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of families in Canada potentially affected by the ongoing difficulties in the car industry.

Nice to see that Harper noticed. Bush must have sent him the memo.

Bill Mullins-Johnson, free after 12 years

The Ontario government said it would compensate victims after a judicial inquiry concluded that poor oversight of an inadequately trained Canadian pathologist led to the wrongful convictions of several people accused of killing small children.

Justice Stephen Goudge has made public his report on the work of Dr. Charles Smith, whose expert testimony led to an undetermined number of wrongful convictions.

Smith’s testimony played a key role in the conviction of a man who spent 12 years in jail for sexually assaulting and strangling his 4-year-old niece. Evidence later surfaced that showed the girl died of natural causes, and William Mullins-Johnson was exonerated last year.

Goudge concludes Smith as well as Ontario’s former chief coroner James Young and his deputy, Jim Cairns, played a critical role in the wrongful convictions. Goudge urged the Ontario government to compensate victims and Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley later said he would.

“To those who have suffered an injustice we are truly sorry,” Bentley said. “We are committed to compensating.”

Bentley said they would review every case involving Smith from 1981 to 2002.

Too often, positions like coroner and staff are sinecures based on political association. Qualification is determined by who you know and play golf with – rather than investigative talent and ability.

This result is neither unique nor confined to a parochial division of one Canadian province.