We're off to see the Lizard (the Wonderful Lizard of Laws)

I'm going to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to plead for the rights of illegitimate children. I've researched the issue. I think I can win! If I succeed law's lizard will bite off his left arm and grow some new tail.

UPDATE: HRC wanted me to make the claim at the SBT, where the issues will heard in about 3 months. I do what I say I'll do! Meanwhile the Ontario Liberals changed the law after I made my appeal. However, they are still in court against single parents every day asserting their vested entitlement to child support. So I press on...



This page is for my bookmarks. I also have some notes and private correspondence that I must keep to myself for now.
 Legitimacy (family law)

What are Human Rights? 

Bill 128, Uniform Federal and Provincial Child Support Guidelines Act, 1997

Canadian Child Support Guidelines a Scandal

D.B.S. v. S.R.G.; L.J.W. v. T.A.R.; Henry v. Henry; Hiemstra v. Hiemstra

Sparks v. Dartmouth/Halifax County Regional Housing Authority, (1993), 119 N.S.R. (2d) 91.

OHRC: Litigation and inquiry strategy

Canadians want work. Why have so many stopped looking?

Official Report of  DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Hansard) THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2014.

B.C. exempts child support for families on assistance

The end of assigning maintenance rights: What does it mean?

Providing a Brighter Future for All Ontario Children

Lawsuit calls for end to claw-back of child support

Province urged to allow women on welfare to keep child support

Province sued over child support (important for how the lawyer suggests child support be held in trust until the child turns 18)

Recent Ontario Tweet

Recent Ontario Hansard

The UK Context

The Child Support Agency and the Old Poor Law

The US Context

CHILD SUPPORT PASS-THROUGH AND DISREGARD POLICIES FOR PUBLIC ASSISTANCE RECIPIENTS

Evaluation of the $150 Child Support Pass-Throughand Disregard Policy in the District of Columbia 

Testing New Ways to Increase the Economic Well-Being of Single-Parent Families:The Effects of Child Support Policies on Welfare Participants

When a mother is not married, it's not always clear who the father is -- and whether or not he must pay child support.

Andrew Coyne ...

His column today: The idea we can’t debate abortion is unworthy of a democratic country.

Like MP Stephen Woodworth, Coyne is patently disingenuous. His seeks to move the abortion debate back into the legislative sphere while pretending that is where policy is best shaped. He even drops the same rhetorical guantlet as Woodworth: 

"But it is dishonest to pretend this means the matter has been settled, now and forever, or that dissenters from the status quo are, by definition, extremists. Any honest defence of the status quo must concede:..."

Contrast to Woodworth yesterday: 

"What would the motion do? Let us be honest and not mislead anybody who is watching today. ...  Why does it matter that such laws are crafted with great care and with utmost honesty? ...  It is sad that it is not obvious why our law defining a human being must absolutely be an honest law ... Members should not concern themselves with fearful imaginings but look solely at the dishonesty of subsection 223(1). "

Of course speakers who project dishonesty onto their opponents in debate never get far. That game seeds incivility and is the refuge of the weak. 

I find it sad that Coyne never betrays his own reasons for desiring a legislative approach to abortion.  Yet while he speaks from a podium instead of his heart it would be helpful if he would at least be factual.  He wrote that Woodworth's motion was an attempt to break through the taboo on debating abortion. In fact Rod Bruinooge already did that successfully with his failed Private Member's bill Roxanne's Law.  A political journalist of Coyne's stature should never sacrifice context to literary cause.  Our federal parliamentarians of all political stripes will not allow themselves to be roped in by extremist abortion politics of the left OR right because the taboo is already dead. Fortunately the Prime Minister made it clear that Woodworth's 'unvotable' motion isn't up to snuff. 

Coyne has been flogging this subject since 2008: "The Abortion Debate Canada is Afraid to Have" - Maclean's.   That was the year Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada,  a provocation the left should by now regret. 

Rod Bruinooge Explains Roxanne's Law from Roxanne's Law on Vimeo.

Supreme Court of Canada ruling in Crookes v. Newton / Date: 20111019 Docket: 33412

Internet Activists are applauding the Supreme Court's decision in Crookes v. Newton (a.k.a "The Hyperlink Ruling"). Professor Michael Geist thinks Justice Abella is "exactly right" while lawyer Howard Knopf claims "the court was fully aware of what was at stake".  I beg to differ. If anything the ruling demonstrates just how impotent our Justice system is to take the reins on issues of free speech and the Internet.

Around the world journalists are being censored and imprisoned. The forces that seek to silence truth follow the internet's hyperlinks to their targets. A hyperlink is much more than what the ruling defines: it's more than a citation, more than republication and more than an argument over content ownership. A hyperlink demonstrates what a citizen has read, what they know: this is the freedom attribute that is at stake. Thus it is patently unhelpful that Justice Abella has ruled that a hyperlink is 'only' a citation, 'not' republication and 'not' litigable. Relativism and dualism canceled the efficacy of legal discourse in this instance. This ruling should have pointed to the need for legislating the meta data of hyperlinks: who tracks their click-throughs, who uses those stats against us, etc. I also expected some mention in the ruling of the dynamics of persecution that attend an individual's entree into publication in this age. There is none.

Sadly our country's highest bench doesn't seem to have the savvy required to bring defamation case law in line with the new realities of publishing. It's not like our highest Court hasn't heard from the best legal minds in this regard. The SCC has heard it all. I can only surmise that their deficits in understanding relate fundamentally to how they work.  Perhaps the court should bear in mind that any person hyperlinking to a Supreme Court ruling that disfavors a government position is a person at risk. I would ask Justice Abella if this is a hyperlink protected by law:

IN THE MATTER OF AN INTENDED ACTION

B E T W E E N 

GUY WILLIAM GIORNO

Plaintiff

-AND-.

Defendant

 

KAREN MARY KRISFALUSI

Yet I wouldn't put much faith in her answer...


UPDATE:

As at December 1st, 2011 countless law firms and lawyers have written at length about this ruling. Good places to go from here are Sonia Dawan's Potential Liability for For Hyperlinking: Crookes v. Newton and Maanit Zemel's Will the SCC's Online Defamation Decisions go 'viral'?. Both are confused speculations. For my part I'm still sure this ruling will have harmful consequences for online freedom. My view will attain merit in the future..I'm sure..

Chantal Hébert mentions the federal Lobbying Act's 5 Year Prohibition Rule on the At Issue Panel

I just reviewed last week's At Issue Panel. Chantal Hébert:

You [the Harper Government] put in place lots of checks and balances. You have the Accountability Act. You basically make it difficult for just about anyone to come to work for a politician and then not pay for it for the rest of his career. But then as the government you're entitled to just take public money outside of every guideline and every process and say: "Well this money -- we're gonna spend as we sit fit and we're not even going to tell Parliament about it."

Meanwhile Guy Giorno (who is calling for jail time for breaching the federal Lobbyist's Code of Conduct) has twice since derided Hébert on twitter:

It's one thing for Giorno to lobby hard in the public sphere for changes to the Federal Lobbying Act. Yet if he is published doing that -- alongside seasoned political journalists, competing with them as though he has no partisan interest -- you would think he would at least possess enough common sense not to pick brutish fights with same on Twitter.