Conservative hypocrisy on election fraud

This past week has seen the unfolding of the robocall story, in which it is alleged that the Conservative Party of Canada or someone acting on the behalf of the Conservative Party paid for automated phone calls to be made on election day 2011 to mislead voters to incorrect polling stations. The calls claimed to be from Elections Canada.

The focus is on a riding in Guelph, but Edmonton's Boyle Street is in one of the ridings that has been mentioned in some of the articles. As previous readers of this blog know, Peter Goldring was running for the Conservatives in the riding, with a serious challenge from NDP Ray Martin. Goldring is currently sitting as an independent while the issue of his refusal to take a breathalyzer test is sorted out. He has entered a plea of Not Guilty, which seems odd given that he DID refuse the test. Perhaps he plans to challenge the law. A Conservative who wants to argue for less crime prevention? Definitely not the campaign platform he presented when he was running for office. Things must look different when you are the one charged.

For personal reasons, I do not want to believe that anyone associated with Goldring's campaign had any part in this current Conservative debacle. Unfortunately, Goldring's previous behaviour makes his involvement plausible. Our household was getting a lot of automated calls related to the election - but because we already knew who to vote for and where our polling station was, we just hung up on them without listening all the way through. I am now wishing I had paid more attention.

The misleading calls at the centre of the fraud - and they are illegal - are not a matter of speculation. Thousands of calls were made. Elections Canada received the complaints on election day, May 2. They know which company was responsible for issuing the calls (RackNine in Edmonton). The question of exactly WHO recorded the messages, paid for their distribution, and who knew about the tactic has not yet been settled.The disposable cell phone in Guelph had a phony name registered.

Why did it take more than nine months for the election fraud to be made public?

Let us not forget that we had the election after the Conservatives were found to be in contempt of Parliament. The Conservatives have a history of breaking the rules to suit themselves, and they justify it by saying the Liberals broke rules when they were in power. Yes - but the Conservatives ran on the promise that they would be more accountable. Instead, we have broken rules compounded by coverups and scapegoating.

From Stephen Harper's lies about the Cadman affair to Bev Oda's altering of documents to Peter Goldring's lies about the Boyle Renaissance, this is a party Canadians should be ashamed to support. Here's the kicker: those lies were all known before the election. It is not hard to see why the Conservatives might feel they would need a little illegal help to win their majority.

The issue boils down to this: someone broke the law to help the Conservatives win the election. That someone knew they were breaking the law and took precautions to conceal their identity. The Conservatives then won a majority of seats with a minority of popular vote. They have hurried to put in place legislation that the majority of Canadians do not want. The Harper Government, knowing the law was broken, seems to have done nothing about it until forced by exposure in the media. Even if the determination is that the party cannot be proven guilty for the calls, they are guilty for not taking action earlier.

Now we have a problem, and the solution lies with the rank-and-file Conservatives who supported the liars by voting for them. If they have any moral fibre left, they need to prove it. They must be the ones to take to the streets and demand byelections - even at the risk of losing their majority in the House of Commons. If they do not, then they are supporting corruption by their silence.

The Conservative government treated this as if it was merely a dispute between parties, trouble stirred up  by their opponents. So for nine months nothing was done. Now they are saying they really want to get to the bottom of this. Say what??? Then why did you do nothing about it when it was reported? Did you think everything would be fine as long as no-one could actually pin it on a Conservative?  How long do you think it will be before "Pierre Poutin" is revealed? Why are the media at the forefront of the investigation instead of the government?

I am aware that in talking about Conservative supporters who worked the election in one of the mentioned ridings I am talking about members of my own family. You will also notice that I am not espousing any other party - this is not about party affiliation. During the election I supported a candidate with a track record for honesty and intelligence over a candidate who had promoted hatred and lies - I made my choice based on the honour of the person, not the party. 

So let's get some honourable Conservatives working on this. Come clean. Call the byelections.

Bill C-30 and vikileaks

I have been reading with interest the opinion pieces in major Canadian newspapers regarding Bill C-30 and the vikileaks protest. Most commentators have been moderate, saying that MP Vic Toews should be censured for his behaviour but also saying they do not support the anonymous vikileaks source which distributed personal information related to Mr. Toews’ divorce. This is not the way we comport ourselves in Canada; we are civil, and we do not stoop to such base behaviour.

True. Not ordinarily. But all the protests, science and rational discourse in the world have not been able to sway the ideologues of the federal Conservatives from any of their bizarre schemes. Their legitimacy as a democratically elected government is based on a flawed system whereby a party with a substantial minority of votes can get a majority of seats. 

And on Thursday February 23, 2012, it was revealed that election day fraud was perpetrated last spring, and even if it was not the Conservatives (the news reports keep saying the company that perpetrated the fraud has ties to the Conservatives), the election results in the affected ridings are now in question.

If a party takes advantage of a flawed system and fraud to claim a majority and enact legislation that is contrary to the interests and wishes of the people it serves, then that government's "legitimacy" is questionable. Governments need to serve their constituents, not follow blindly their destructive ideologies and pretend they were elected to do so. By members of Parliament breaking the law or their own rules when it serves their own purposes, the Conservatives have modeled the behaviour deemed acceptable. 

On the topic of internet child pornography: recently there were arrests of 60 people in Ontario related to this. The police seemed to be able to conduct their investigation quite satisfactorily by the processes currently permitted by law. If the Conservatives believe child pornography is so rampant that it merits widespread surveillance and unlimited police powers, then maybe they should be spending more on prevention measures like increasing funding to mental health research and treatment programs. 

My concern over C-30 is complicated. I am one of the people leaning toward "If you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?" But what we have seen over the past few years, with the G20 Summit and the Cadmin affair, now the possibility of large scale election fraud, and the behaviour of local Conservatives Jaffer and Goldring (see previous posts), is a disdain for the law. What I foresee is unwarranted search and seizure to justify passing C-30 - and in cases where the searches don't turn up anything, evidence will be planted. At least having to put your evidence or reasonable suspicions before a judge means there has to be SOMETHING already pointing to a breaking of the law BEFORE the police sieze the property, before it can be tampered with. As it stands, the bill provides this government with a great way to harass or frame anyone they want. I'm a law-and-order/social responsibility kind of person; sometimes that means I speak out against the things members of the government do. That makes me a target. So what would stop a politician from directing the police (and the G20 summit showed how closely they work together) to get my IP address and information, come to my house and take away my computer (which has confidential files related to my work duties) and plant false evidence? Nothing. As the bill is currently presented, it is my understanding they don’t even have to tell you why.

Fifteen years ago I had the experience of being inappropriately targeted by politicians who then didn't even have the decency to acknowledge my civil - even gentle - letters correcting the factual errors they made to the public about me and my work. Those politicians were Reform/Alliance and Conservative. They were completely willing to be judge and jury without any sort of fair hearing. No, I do not trust these people. They have proven that they are not trustworthy. To give these people more power is ill-advised.

How, then, do you stop a majority government that will not accept fact, reason, or logic and that labels anyone who stands up for principles of democracy and justice as enemies of the state or friends of pedophiles?

Vikileaks humiliated Toews, and it was wrong. But Toews needs to understand that an unwarranted search and seizure, without explanation or justification to the person whose property is confiscated, is also wrong. The consequences in terms of lost work, lingering damage to reputation, and the expenses of spurious court cases and investigations – these are far greater than Toews’ having his divorce documents made public. Toews was willing to put lots of Canadians through that process for no discernible reason, other than to populate the prisons the Conservatives want to build, promoting a culture of fear and violence. Since when have those been Canadian values? If what it took for Toews to wake up was a dose of his own medicine, and it worked...

Stephen Harper wants to change Canada (despite Canada working better than almost every other country in the world). He needs to be prepared for the result: Canadians might stop behaving with the civility that used to be our trademark, and the poetic justice is that the monster the Conservatives create will turn its sights on them.

Civil liberties and civility

Big political news in the neighbourhood: our Member of Parliament has decided to sit as a Civil Libertarian instead of as a Conservative. He was elected as a Conservative in a heavily contested riding in 2011 (in Alberta, 66.8% of the votes were for Conservatives but they got 96.4% of the seats. In our riding, Peter Goldring was elected with only 52.8% of the vote).

To see why Goldring is now sitting as an independent Civil Libertarian, read this article from the Globe and Mail.

Note the quote about how it is "hypocritical to hold principles and apply them only when convenient."

It is convenient for Peter Goldring to espouse civil libertarian principles now that he is facing charges for refusing to give a breath sample to the police when he was pulled over during a Checkstop campaign. If you check his voting record in the House of Commons, you could be forgiven for not thinking of him as a civil libertarian. It seems the Honourable Member has voted in favour of some quite non-libertarian bills while he was sitting as a Conservative. For instance, his party's omnibus crime bill, which included elements that even fellow Conservatives find too draconian. Goldring's outspokenness during the marriage debates are another example. Goldring is a civil libertarian when it is convenient.

For instance, according to the articles on his website he is against government support for private sector projects - specifically the new arena the Katz Group is planning in Edmonton. Yet Goldring has several times spoken glowingly of Mayfair Village, a private developer receiving public monies for a housing project, while decrying the non-profit Boyle Renaissance.

That is his right - but it is ironic that he has gone on record as being critical of people who are inconsistent in exactly this way.

Here's the problem: Goldring was not elected as a civil libertarian. He was elected as a Conservative. If he has experienced a conversion - a "Checkstop to Damascus" experience - then the right thing to do is resign and run again in a byelection. Or, if he is truly sitting as an independent civil libertarian, he needs to start voting against the Conservatives when they violate those principles.

The Conservatives ran on a get-tough-on-crime agenda. They claimed all sorts of "unreported crime" was happening, and they want to build prisons to accommdate the prisoners one assumes will be ferreted out by increased government intervention. Goldring supported that stance during the election. Yet when it is Goldring himself being asked to cooperate in a Checkstop - a measure introduced to reduce the cfrime of impaired driving - suddenly Goldring is a civil libertarian.

Some of the things Goldring has voted for in the past - such as mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking minors - I wholeheartedly agree with. But would a civil libertarian agree with them? As a civil libertarian, Goldring might be less palatable to the electorate than he was as a Conservative - and since he did not exactly win by a landslide, the principled thing to do would be to run again. If the Conservatives fielded another candidate, it is unlikely Goldring would beat them.

If Goldring intends to rejoin the Conservatives once his legal woes have been sorted out, that speaks of a different kind of hypocrisy - where his change of principles is a convenience to keep the Conservative party from suffering any ill consequences.

I understand Goldring's position about the Checkstop, but that does not make him a civil libertarian any more than my position on homelessness makes me a communist. Party and philosophy affiliations are not without meaning - and 52.8% of the vote does not entitle Goldring to assume his constituency supports hypocrisy.

Update February 2012: Goldring has discovered there is an actual Libertarian party so he will sit as an independent Conservative instead.

Two Deaths and a Maybe

When my father died in April, he had fulfilled his goals - including his last goal of reaching 85, although he just squeaked that one in there by dying on his birthday. Although the family was sad that he died, we were also relieved that his final illness was blessedly short instead of turning into an extended period of torture and loss.

This week much of Canada mourns the death of Jack Layton, the New Democrat leader who finally managed to bring the New Democrats to the point of official opposition. He died at the age of 61, and while he accomplished many things in his life, he died with unfinished business. He had made a comeback after prostate cancer, but then died of another kind. That sense that he had unfinished business - and for him that business was definitely that he planned to be our next Prime Minister - seems to have compounded the sense of loss felt by his supporters and by people who might not have agreed with his politics but who recognized in him a man who was truly dedicated to public service.

Neither of these deaths is on my back stoop.

On my back stoop is Emil. He stops by once a week or so to see if we have any bottles or cartons for the bottle depot. Sometimes he asks if we have any work he could do. Emil is homeless. I am pretty sure he has struggles with alcohol abuse. A year ago Emil could still work, and he could carry on a conversation, and you had to wonder how a reasonably attractive and fit man ended up on the streets.

But Emil has undergone a change. He has lost weight, he is weak, and he is frightened. According to Emil, he has lung cancer.

This week he showed up at the back stoop to see if we had any food and enough money for LRT fare so he could get to the hospital for his tests. He is urinating blood, he says, and he is afraid his kidneys have been affected. He is allowed food, but he is not allowed to drink until after the tests. He is not very steady on his feet, and as he tells me this his eyes well up and he says, "I'm scared. I'm really scared."

There are con men who will use this kind of tale to extort money from kind strangers. Emil is not entirely a stranger - he is a neighbour, albeit one without a home. I have no reason to disbelieve him. He is sick and homeless and frightened.

I give him some food. At our house the food is basic - some tomato, pieces of cheese, rice cakes, fruit salad with raspberries from our garden. I give him what change I have in my pocket - it's not enough to pay the LRT fare, but he tells me he has 75 cents already so it will be enough.

We are headed out to a meeting about the new community centre, so Emil takes the food and goes away. Later I find a piece of tomato and the plastic fork in the grass, fallen from his unsteady hands.

My father died with the support and love of his family and friends. Jack Layton died with the support of millions of people. Emil, whose life was already precarious, is hanging on to his last shreds of courage and dignity. To suggest that Emil has a fighting chance of beating cancer is almost obscene. If the disease can beat Jack Layton, with the resources and support and pluck he had, what hope can Emil have?

Getting High

The stratospheric voices of classical coloratura sopranos like Ruth Welting have a chilling, thrilling side. They are like circus high-wire acts; the whole audience barely breathes, waiting to see if she'll hit the notes or if she'll fall short or crack.

The male singers had the Three Tenors to look to - the magnificence of Pavarotti's lush voice with its full-throated high Cs; the intelligence of Domingo's approach to singing; the passion of Carreras.

Even higher are the countertenors. These are the men who sing as high as women, using modern vocal techniques to approximate the art of the famous castrati. The rock stars of their day, the castrati were boys who had been castrated to keep their voices high and pure. The practice was eventually outlawed, but the legends of their astonishing voices continued to inspire, yielding the 1994 film Farinelli and Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven.

Last night was the opening concert of the First Annual Edmonton Early Music Festival. The featured artists were local soprano Jolaine Kerley, cellist Josephine van Lier (who moved to Edmonton from Europe some years ago), harpsichordist Gilbert Martinez from San Francisco, and the amazing American countertenor Brian Asawa.

Asawa is a big name in countertenor circles. He won the major competitions and he has sung at the Met and all over the world. His performance in the concert made it clear why he has been so successful: a marriage of wonderful tone, terrific technique, and a flair for the dramatic. He is shameless - and good.

The concert was not well-attended. Edmonton has a huge number of concerts every weekend - and competition for audience share is tough. I only heard about this concert by accident the night before.

In two shows in my past I have been cast in parts that required stratospheric singing. One was in the comedy Farelinelli at the Fringe Festival. The role was of a choir boy who had been the object of...interference...by a priest, and he had consequently refused to grow up and had remained a boyish treble. The other was The Singing Blade, in which I played the castrato Gaetano Guadagni. I had no idea what I was doing technically. But it gave me an appreciation for countertenors, because it certainly was not easy.

Asawa was slated to do a masterclass the day after the concert. A masterclass is where a master (in this case Asawa) listens to high-level students and gives them some coaching. Masterclasses are sometimes closed to the public - only the students who are singing can attend - but sometimes they are open. This one was open, and I was looking forward to attending and finding out how the countertenor approached the technical aspect of his art.

I mentioned to the organizers how fabulous it was going to be, and they revealed that one of the slated singers for the masterclass had cancelled. They were short a singer, and did I want to sing?

The bass-baritone repertoire is my usual fare. Just last week I sang the role of Pooh-Bah in The Mikado, performing in the very church where Asawa sang last night. No doubt Asawa would have given me lots of excellent feedback on my singing. I asked if any of the other singers was a countertenor, and the answer was no.

I made a deal. I would happily sing for the masterclass, but only if I could sing in the countertenor range. The organizers agreed, and introduced me to Asawa.

Panic set in. What had I done? I had committed to sing repertoire that I do not usually sing in front of one of the world's leading countertenors. Insane! The oldest of the other singers would still be young enough to be my child.

The panic was not enough to disturb my sleep (nothing short of a full-scale disaster stops me from falling asleep), but in the morning I found myself swithering about what to sing. I had thought I would sing But Who May Abide from Handel's Messiah, but I sang it as a bass recently and I wondered if that would make it more difficult. I considered Caccini's Amarilli, mia bella.

There are astonishing countertenors on YouTube. Jaroussky. Marian. Gall. Daniels. Asawa. I knew I did not have the technical ability to sing anything too florid. I finally settled on Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga, a soprano aria from Rinaldo. In the opera it is sung by a woman, but does that really matter when it is being sung in a concert or masterclass situation? To some people it might. I think it is very beautiful, and it is the right range for me, and since I was already breaking all kinds of rules...

I went to the university to get the music from their music library. But the library was closed this weekend. I went to the downtown public library, but all I could find was an online instrumental score. I knew I had a copy somewhere in my files, but where?

Not in my Handel folder.

Then I found it: on page 1103 of the sixth volume of a 1917 anthology. The music had awful Victorian editorial markings - lots of crescendos and decrescendos etc. an the text was not quite right. But it was music.

The first two singers in the masterclass were truly lovely. A lyric/coloratura soprano singing Bach, and a very tasteful mezzo singing Dowland to guitar accompaniment. While I listened to them, I thought "I am going to make such a fool of myself coming after these fine young singers..."

When my turn came, I prefaced it with an explanation of why I was there and why I wanted to sing the countertenor range for the masterclass. There were some people in the audience who know me as a bass-baritone and who have been very supportive of my work, and I was a bit worried about losing face in front of them. I asked one of them - a wonderful speech therapist I have known for many years - if she would push the button on my recorder and record the session for my private listening later.

Marnie Giesbrecht had kindly agreed to play the accompaniment on the harpsichord, wich was tuned to baroque pitch. Baroque pitch is a bit lower than our modern standard - with an A at 415 instead of 440. She asked if it would be a problem, and I didn't think it would.

I was wrong. Listening to the recording when I got home, I am surprised the audience didn't throw tomatoes. My tuning was awful - mostly sharp. and I know it is because I was using my eyes instead of my ears - trying to sing the pitches on the page. This has occasionally been a problem for me when music is transposed up or down. The result in this case was a strident, ugly sound and very out of tune.

Mr. Asawa had agreed to treat me as a beginner, and he was true to his word. He took me through some exercises before we tried the aria again. Then we started over. By this time I was more attuned to the pitch of the harpsichord! Painstakingly, pitch by pitch and phrase by phrase, Asawa teased a countertenor voice out of me. By the end of the half hour, the sound was much improved.

Not once did he show dismay. and no-one criticised me for taking the risk, although I can imagine some of the dinner table conversations that evening, particularly from the other singers.

The last singer was a young bass-baritone. Tall, slim, blond, chiseled features and huge eyes. A resonance, velvety voice. He seemed intelligent, artistic, and blessed with a real gift. Listening to him and the approach he had been encouraged to take (he is doing his Masters) took me back through my years of study and the frustration my teachers experienced - and I experienced - when my voice did not "settle". The more young male singers I hear, the more I wonder if countertenor ought to have been my fach. I remember, though, that I had NO access to my falsetto at all. Already I was too tense, too anxious to please and to do it right. So if I was meant to be a countertenor, no-one would have known.

On the way home I called my friend David in Toronto. David and I had been talking some months ago about Jeffrey Gall and that perhaps I should make a trip and study with him for a bit. I did not see the point at my age. After the class with Asawa my knees felt weak, but my voice felt fabulous. I told David that I was still conflicted about having done the masterclass - and that is true. No-one who was there would have known that I am atually a quite accomplished singer. My issues around singing countertenor clouded everything else.

The triumph here is that at my age I still had the courage to get up in front of people and try something new, something I felt was likely to fail but fail in an interesting way. Mr. Asawa was generous, gracious and intelligent; at the end he commented on how quickly I caught on. I wanted to say "My career is almost over; I have not caught on quickly enough."

Lies from Conservative MP Peter Goldring

MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East) wants to be re-elected. He has been a member of the minority government of Stephen Harper – a government which has been criticised for not telling the truth to Parliament and, by extension, the people of Canada.

So perhaps the lies in Peter Goldring’s March 2011 constituency newsletter (#484, “Boyle Renaissance or Boyle Institution?” - pictured here) merely reflect the philosophy of his party.

I know politicians are not supposed to use the word “liar” in addressing each other in the House of Commons. It is considered un-Parliamentary. I am not a politician, and Peter Goldring’s lies in his newsletter are not protected by Parliamentary privilege because they were not made in the House of Commons. The actual facts were provided to me by request by the City of Edmonton.

LIE: Peter Goldring says the Boyle Renaissance project will have most of “a thousand more social subsidized units.”

TRUTH: A 150-suite apartment building and a 90-suite seniors’ residence, neither of them with ongoing subsidies. No shelters.

LIE: Peter Goldring says the Boyle Renaissance project will “move disadvantaged persons already integrated into the greater community throughout Edmonton into a ‘Boyle Institution’.”

TRUTH: Some of those units will be for people who were moved out of the closed York Hotel and Butte Apartments which were already on the site. The other units are to address the needs of the currently underhoused and the aging/disabled population. People already "integrated" into the greater community are not being moved.

LIE: Peter Goldring says the Boyle Renaissance project is largely funded by the federal government as “the single largest contributor to the Boyle ‘Renaissance’ development costs”

TRUTH:Not only is the federal government NOT a large contributor, but so far there is NO direct federal money at all AND requests for federal money have been DENIED.

He further suggests that

• non-profit sector operators will be making profit from rental top-ups. FALSE
• the City of Edmonton is giving away the land and tax breaks. FALSE

So what is the Boyle Renaissance really? It is a community renewal plan for a couple of blocks in downtown Edmonton. In three phases, the project replaces an aging community hall and under-used sports field, and rehabilitates empty lots and land currently occupied by a scrapyard. You can check it out by clicking here, or read on for a quick summary.

Partners in Phase 1 are the City of Edmonton, the Government of Alberta Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Edmonton YMCA, the Capital Region Housing Corporation and the Boyle Street Community League (BSCL). You don’t see "the Harper Government" in this list, right?

Phase 1 includes

1) a new Community Centre to replace the old hall, which was in disrepair and could not be easily or economically fixed. Do you see any mention of this community resource in Goldring’s letter? The flex space (useable as gym or major event space), community activity rooms, multipurpose rooms, and catering kitchen will serve the city at large as well as Boyle Street community. It will be operated by the BSCL under a 25-year lease (licence), and owned by the City of Edmonton. No federal money has been given for the community centre. This is a public facility, but it is unique in being operated by the community rather than through the city’s Community Services facilities department. This business model empowers the community and fosters pride in the facility.

2) Sharing the same building will be a 70-space day care run by the YMCA for anyone in the city of Edmonton who wishes to sign up their child. Is Goldring counting these kids as shelter units? The YMCA will also have a Family Resource Centre in this building, to serve families from anywhere in the city, including but not limited to Boyle Street, McCauley and downtown.

3) The other building in Phase 1 is a modest apartment building called the Welcome Village. Is this a shelter? No. The YMCA, in partnership with Capital Region Housing, is building 19 studio apartments, 61 regular one-bedroom suites, 15 additional one-bedroom suites which are fully accessible for the disabled, and 55 two-bedroom suites. That’s a total of 150 apartments, 70 of which are earmarked for families. This is not “a thousand more social shelter units” as Peter Goldring claims. The apartment building has no ongoing subsidy; it has to pay for itself like any other apartment.

4) 70 underground parking stalls under the community centre building, an enhanced streetscape on 104 Avenue, and parkland around the buildings. And the City of Edmonton, as a partner in the project, still owns the land – it is not being given to anyone.

So are those shelter units Golding is talking about in Phase 2? No. Phase 2 is a 90-suite assisted living facility for seniors, with a third of the suites wheelchair-friendly. The partners are Métis Capital Housing Corporation and Canadian Paraplegic Society, and the project is funded by the government of Alberta (46%), City of Edmonton (25%) and Métis Capital Housing Corporation (29%). Do you see the Harper Government listed as a funder here? No. But the main floor does plan, at this point, to have a full-service pharmacy, dental office and medical clinic, operated by Bigstone Cree Nation. The pharmacy is expected to be run by a pharmacy group or chain, and the medical and dental facilities to be tendered to private professionals. Bigstone Cree Nation Medical Transportation Services provides medical transportation to all of northern Alberta, and this building might become the base for their Edmonton dispatch services.

Phase 3 will be 50-60 units of market housing and the new site of the community garden, which has been in the neighbourhood for many years. Do you see any mention of these in Goldring’s newsletter? No. Do you see the Harper Government listed as a funder here? N0.

There will be NO city of Edmonton tax exemptions to organizations developing Phase II or III, but they may be eligible for other exemptions from other levels of government depending on their tax status (as charitable or non-profit organisation or First Nations). This would be true no matter where they build.

Goldring asks “Could it be the attraction (read profit) for some non-profit organizations of free building costs, free land, no taxes and full market rate rental income prospects after provincial top-up trumps enlightened community integration?”

Enlightened community integration is exactly what Boyle Renaissance is about. Goldring doesn’t mention that the Boyle Street community is also home to The Quarters to the south and another private development in the works to the north – both of which are market housing developments aiming to accommodate, in total, more than 20,000 people. He doesn't mention the exhaustive community consultations.

Open community meetings were held on the Boyle Renaissance by the Boyle Street Community League, the City of Edmonton, and consultants representing the Phase 1 owners. I have been in on a lot of those meetings as an interested member of the community living in full view of the site. The plan has had extensive community consultation which overwhelmingly supports it. The person who does not support it is our elected MP, whose agenda is unclear, although he has spoken glowingly about the subsidised Mayfair Village private development, which has about the same number of below-market units as Boyle Renaissance Phases 1 and 2 combined and received funding from the same public Cornerstones program! Which project do you think should be getting public money – the one where developers make profit and might ditch their altruism after taking the money (like Red Deer’s Monarch Place/Innovative Housing debacle - for the story on that one, click here), or the one which is operated for the community? Goldring seems to think tax dollars should go to the private developers.

Arithmetic might not be Goldring’s strong suit. He is, after all, part of a government that says it prides itself on fiscal responsibility but which has racked up a huge deficit. And area residents might remember Goldring’s arithmetic when his newsletter was about the riding boundary changes – he argued that the 5000 projected Railtown residents were not included in the committee’s calculations, and then he also did not include them in his own calculations of how he thought the boundaries should be changed. Well, here we are again. Goldring is making up the figures, ignoring the projected 20,000+ increase in Boyle Street’s population from market housing, and pretending that non-existent federal funding gives him the right to lie about the project and turn people against it.

(The project did apply for federal funding for a skating rink, but the request was turned down)

Goldring supporters might think that maybe he was genuinely mistaken and not deliberately lying; maybe he was operating on old information. Way back at the beginning of the Boyle Renaissance, the projected number of units (which included BOTH subsidised AND market rate units) was over 900. But that changed two years ago – and when Goldring continued to publish the wrong information in earlier newsletters, his staff was contacted and asked to correct it. I know, because I am one of the people who contacted them.

All these public and community meetings, plus updates in the local newspaper and readily available information from the City – right there on their website - if Peter Goldring’s facts are mistaken, it is NOT because the facts were not available to him.

I don’t want to re-elect a man who lies to his constituents and works against the community interests and consultation process. Why does he want constituents to call HIM? He has done nothing to support this project, his government has put no direct funding into this project – NONE, despite his claims – so it is frankly none of his business. Why does he make it his business? If his constituency newsletters have been any indication, it is because Goldring would rather not have community-based projects when the money could go to private developers like it has with Mayfair Village or Monarch Place.

When a politician supports private business over the community, he has lost sight of his mandate.

High Order Plagiarism

Lately I have become aware of the many essay-writing services available online. A few suspiciously fluent papers submitted by my students had me trolling the web for possible sources.

The sites promise that they will not sell you, the student, a plagiarized paper. I suppose that is true - it is not a plagiarized paper until the moment the student submits it under his/her name when it was actually written by someone at the essay-writing service. By promising that the paper will pass plagiarism software scans, the service is not assuring the buyer of a high ethical stance; they are telling the buyer they won't get caught.

One site suggested you could tell the scams from the professionals by looking at the quality of the writing on the site pages themselves. I had already found several errors on their own site - including a completely incorrect use of a preposition - and so they provided me with a chuckle.

Here is the opening sentence of a term paper sample posted on the Custom Essay Meister.com site at this address on this date [http://www.customessaymeister.com/?page=samples&handle=termpaper&sampleid=1#sampleanchor] :

Over the years the evolution of the structure and functions of the family have
made this institution a hotly debated topic in the public arena.

Umm. So the main noun of the subject is evolution, which is a singular abstract common noun, and the verb form used in the sentence is plural. [Never mind that an institution is not, in and of itself, a hotly debated topic.] A basic grammar mistake in the opening line of a paper that is supposed to be a major term paper? Someone is going to charge per page for this? A student is going to buy this paper and submit it? Woe to the student if they submit it to me.

One of the student testimonials for that service purports to come from a student in my city. Her testimonial said

My writer was great, your company and writers have assisted me in a few of my projects required so i may work full time, study and look after my family. Thank you!

Students should pay for help with their writing if they need the help. The kind of help they need is not the easy buy-a-paper kind. Buying a paper is hugely dishonest. Beyond the plagiarism, which can get a student expelled from a university, is the deceit of receiving a grade that does not reflect the achievement of the student. When these students graduate, their lack of writing skill will expose them as frauds. The grades given by their university will make the university look ridiculous.

The help most students in university need is ten years late. They were not taught how to write well by their educators, whether in schools or in the family. Too many students graduate from high school with bad writing skills. The writing skills are not an indication that they are stupid or dull - many a competent writer is dull as dishwater. These students are sociable and eager to learn, but they are ignorant of their own language. So they squeeze into universities, who accept them because the universities need the money and the body count, and instructors are then faced with scads of students who cannot write effectively. The deficit is not always owing to poor writing skills; many of the same students cannot express themselves coherently in speech.

Tuition is steep. Students face a tough challenge: finding the money to pay tuition often means working so many hours that they cannot meet their obligations to their course work. Buying essays, term papers, and various other assignments seems like the quick way to meet the course deadlines and obligations.

It doesn't. The students who buy an essay have not met the obligations of the course. The students have not had their knowledge base enriched through the research. They have not had their cognitive skills exercised in the synthesis phase. They have not learned anything except how to cheat themselves and others.

As painful as it may be, students who did not learn skills for clear and effective writing before they entered university must seek remedial writing help while also juggling their jobs and course work. It may not seem fair to them, but the alternative is to allow universities to confer degrees on people who are barely literate.

My next rant is likely to be about the instructors who are reluctant to fail students who cannot make the grade.