Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Blogger Breaches Canadian Publication Ban
nnet writes "The Toronto Sun is reporting that a U.S. blogger has been breaching a Canadian publication ban on AdScam. While The Sun hasn't given the URL for the blog itself, in fear of a contempt of court charge, this isn't the first time an American has breached a Canadian publication ban according to the article." The Sun story, though, does give a nice title for which to search, and this quickly yields the story in question.
April 02, 2005
Canada's Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open
A political scandal involving the Public Works Ministry, a government effort called the Sponsorship Program, and allegations of corruption in the ruling Liberal Party has Canada abuzz with rumors of payoffs, Mob ties, and snap elections. For the last two years, Canadian politics has been gripped by the so-called "sponsorship scandal" - tens of millions of dollars in government contracts which were funneled into advertizing firms closely connected with the Liberal government for little or no work, but with shadowy rumours that much of the money found its way back into Liberal coffers. Prime Minister Paul Martin, himself a Liberal, appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate these charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials for corruption and malfeasance. (See the blog Small Dead Animals for some excellent background on the case.)
Most of the testimony heard by the Commission has been public, but Judge Gomery has decided to create a publication ban on the testimony of three key witnesses: Jean Brault, president of the ad agency Groupaction, Charles Guité, an officer of the Public Works ministry who worked on the Sponsorship Program, and Paul Coffin, president of the ad agency Coffin Communications. The potential damage of their testimony has so unnerved the Liberal Party that they have reportedly started working towards a snap election so that they will not have to face the voters once the facts surface from the record.
And well they might, if Brault's testimony gives any indication of what they will face. Thanks to a friend of mine, CQ readers can get a taste of what Brault has already told the Gomery Commission. For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal this person's name or position, but this person is in a position to have the information. Bear in mind that this comes from a single source, so while I have confidence in the information, you should consider the sourcing carefully.
Payoffs And Kickbacks
On Thursday, Jean Brault began his testimony, subject to the publication ban, and revealed a massive pattern of corruption going to the highest levels of the Liberal party and government. Brault testified to hundreds of thousands of dollars of bogus transactions designed to benefit the Liberal Party of Canada over a period from 1994 to 2002.
Most of the illegal campaign contributions involved Brault either hiring "employees" -- who were in fact working full time on Liberal Party activities -- or paying invoices for Liberal Party campaign expenses (which were never declared as such) or making untraceable cash donations to Liberal officials. In exchange for helping the federal Liberals in Quebec, Brault received millions of dollars in federal advertising contracts.
Brault said he met with Jean Carle, a key aide to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien to propose a more direct way of ensuring that Groupaction got a large share of federal advertising dollars in Quebec. Carle referred Brault to federal bureaucrat Charles ("Chuck") Guité and told him that "there was room for everybody." Guité later put together the sponsorship program, in which five Liberal connected firms -- including Groupaction -- were guaranteed a monopoly on government "sponsorship" advertising (e.g. federal
advertising at sporting or cultural events) and related work. The sponsorship program eventually became a huge slush fund into which over $250 million was poured, over $100 million of which was paid in fees and commissions to these five advertising firms, with little or any evidence of work done or value for money.
In exchange for these large contracts for little or no work, Brault kicked back generously to the Liberal Party, putting Liberal organizers on his payroll while they continued to perform party work (including, at one point, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's brother, Gaby Chrétien), paying invoices to other companies for work actually done for the Liberal Party, a
How quaint.
sulli
RTFJ.
After reading the first few paragraphs it starts out with an American website and then says canadian website. Which one is it? And if its an American website, then well tough luck canada.
Let's do what Americans do and declare him in our jurisdiction. Then prosecute him.
Wouldn't this be akin to publishing grand jury testimony on the web? Or any other secret testimony? It is against the law to do such a thing.
If bloggers wish to be afforded the privileges and protections held by mainstream journalists (the ones not named Jayson Blair or Mary Mapes), they should follow the same ethical standards.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Get the site linked on Slashdot!
Politely, of course.
sulli
RTFJ.
What power would the Canadian government have over an American website? I highly doubt the US government would bother cooperating. All they could do is go after the Canadian news site that promoted it, but it's too late now...the info is out there.
...is how Slashdot, the ur-weblog, is always two or three days behind on these stories because they always wait to link to a print publication's online arm.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The idea was to try to provide the defendant with an unbiased jury.
Quaint indeeed...
If the tables were turned and a Canadian started disclosing "sensitive" information that the US media was generally discouraged (can't ban b/c of 1st amendment) from disseminating, the scene would likely be much uglier with talks of extradition. At most, this guy will have to avoid going to Canada for a while, for fear of being arrested in contempt of court.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Imagine that... The internet actually getting used for one of its single most useful potentials - Preserving true and absolute freedom of speech.
Guess what? Canadian gag-orders don't apply in the US (and vice-versa). US cryptography export restrictions don't apply from Norway. Just about any of the BS Sharia laws don't apply outside the Middle East. Pretty much nothing applies in Vanuatu.
Welcome to the dawn of a new era. Wake up, world leaders, and smell the coffee - Doesn't it smell so deliciously like your obsolescence? Your petty little regional fiefdoms no longer exist. If the entire planet doesn't agree with you, you lose.
Charles Guité, an officer of the Public Works ministry who worked on the Sponsorship Program
i misread this as "charles guilté" and was immediately confused as to how he'd not already been convicted.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Good luck to all of the people who think they can censor blogs and the internet. I sincerely believe you'll be successful. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return to my quest to single-handedly gather all of the water in the world and store it in my basement.
Electric Monkey Pants
How quaint.
Canada takes quite seriously the concept of making sure that suspects receive a fair trial. When the publication of evidence in advance of the trial would make it impossible for someone to receive a fair trial, a publication ban is entirely reasonable.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
Yes, there is a publication ban. However, Canadian courts have no jurisdiction outside of Canada's borders. Just as US courts have no pull inside of Canada's borders.
If there was a publication ban on a case in the states - Canadians could feel free to ignore it.
However, if this is a Canadian posting on a US blog site... he should be prepared to spend some time in jail.
BlackNova Traders
We must liberate Canada from this evil immediately.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...more likely, 'attention whore'.
The gist of the article is "i know a guy who told me what the secret testimony was". Most likely Gomery banned the publication of this information on the basis that it was unsubstantiated in court, and could be damaging to the Liberals even if untrue. For Slashdotters not familiar with the case, Gomery has been exceedingly level handed and fair and in fact if anything is more likely biased against the Liberals than not.
If all of this DOES turn out to be true I wouldn't be surprised, given that the advertisement scandal gets deeper and deeper every day, but I don't think this blogger amounts to much.
Before everyone starts yelling "too bad Canadians don't have the 4th amendment!" blah blah blah, just ask yourself how you'll feel when the next multiple-murderer gets off in the US due to jury tampering because of a Canadian publication.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Either the bloggers are journalists/publishers and subject to the ban, or as Apple would like, they are not journalists/publishers - in which case they would not be subject to a publication ban. I wish they would just decide one way or the other
Never thought I'd say this, but thank you Americans for making my country free, it's sincerely appreciated.
There's way more to this liberal scandal than we're supposed to know. I understand the necessity for short-term publication bans when a trial is in progress, but anything pertinent to discovering the truth about something (hence a trial) should really be accessible when it comes to public office.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
no, not because of TFA, but because a /. editor actually did some of that new-fangled, whadayacallit, editing. I think I need to lie down.
I'm not going to bother reading it, because it's long, confusing and boring. I'm going to give my stock answer to anything involving Canada, simply because once again, it holds true...
Lets' invade!!!Someone tell bush that they are the REAL target.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
We're spending millions to conduct an enquiry on how taxpayers dollars were wasted. /Canadian
How would a far-right-wing US blog get ahold of material from a Canadian deposition?
Assuming this guy is being specifically targeted, what would happen if the site, well, *magically* was duplicated around the net? Hmm...
I was doing this in 1994 with the Karla Homolka trial via my US based netcom address
Trolling is a art,
"quaint" indeed, but both Canadian and American courts have had the ability to impose a gag order. A recent US case of breaking the gag order (oddly enough, ALSO involving a government bribery/corruption charge) is whats led to the recent demands of laws to keep journalists from keeping their sources private (odd that the Republicans didn't call for such laws when their administration ousted a CIA agent, but "defy" a republican appointed judge and all hell breaks loose).
Pierre will make a nice call to John at a field office, John will the procede to gather a SWAT sqaud and storm the house and glefully grab computers with no intent of caring for them and then take them away.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
from TFA
---
Perreault warned that even if Brault's testimony has been outed by a U.S. website, it doesn't mean it's now public information.
"Anyone who takes that information and diffuses it is liable to be charged with contempt of court," Perreault said.
"Anybody who reproduces it is at risk."
---
show a little respect for Canadian law, if you don't mind.
As much as I would like to think that this guy is a gung-ho promoter of free speech, read in between the lines. He's a neocon, or at least a neocon sympathizer, which makes anything he says highly suspect.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
http://http//korgwal.com/gl-mirror/stories/story.2 0041022011952564.html
But surely the reason for the ban in the first place was so that the jury pool will remain unbiased... it's not as though the testimony is "secret" - journalists have been allowed in. If the prosecution's case collapsed because of this, would it really be something to be proud of?
There's a difference between imposing a gag order on parties to the legal action and blocking members of the public from speaking about what they witness. In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce.
sulli
RTFJ.
Laws to free speech are like grammar to language: it come after the fact in an attempt to control that which naturally occurred without it....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
With press gags, Canada's government discards its own protection: competing debate of the case in a free press. So the blogger becomes the only voice presenting the story to most of the public. The need to violate the gag selects people whose version of the story is is more antigovernment. So the gag prevents people who respect (or fear) the government from providing the accurate picture which can come only from multiple independent reporters. This tawdry little conflict illustrates how free, independent press, competing to tell the story most completely, is the most essential part of a functioning free people with a government that serves them more than it serves itself. Press control is a dangerous game, because tiny leaks multiply the power of the leaked info to completely occupy the info vacuum.
--
make install -not war
Yes, a publication ban on an event open to the public. Not quaint, but rather an indication of the vast differences between Canada and the US.
Here in Canada, a fair amount of the law relies on common sense and good will. The intent of these publication bans is to ensure the accused gets a fair trial. This is essentially the judge saying to the press, "Look, if the whole world hears this testimony before the trial gets fully underway and everything can be put into a proper context, it will be really hard to get a reasonably impartial jury so this person gets a fair trial." They know very well that it's impossible to guarantee it won't come out, but Canadian journalists typically respect it.
What's more important? Having one newspaper scoop another in an attempt to splash the headlines with more sensationalism? Or having an accused person get a fair trial?
Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do). Sometimes conflicting rights have to be balanced, and most Canadians that I know feel that, in this case, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial outweigh the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
"The information, I gather, is very, very damaging and very prejudicial," he said. "If it's accessed by large numbers of people in Montreal where the trial will take place it could have a prejudicial effect."
There is an easy solution to this. Have a change of venue to someplace where they haven't been paying much attention to the news. I recomend somewhere in the Northwest Territories.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech
So... how does this work then?
...a hissy fit. No news here. At the end of this story, we'll see that the right winger is smearing more lies on the internet trying to spread the right wing mental affliction over the border. Fortunately, most Canadians have common sense and decency and will completely ignore this crap. The less intelligent Canadians emigrate to the U.S.
...to prevent the obvious karma whoring?
Canada takes quite seriously the concept of making sure that suspects receive a fair trial.
But apparently they don't go far enough. They clearly see that the jury system has significant problems, but yet they resort to workarounds which are less and less effective, instead of abolishing it.
His emphasis was on why the event was *open to the public*, not on whether publication bans are reasonable.
then try a closed trial... put the transcripts in the public eye once your jury has been chosen and can be shown to be reasonably un-biased.
this is just stupid. Here in america we have enough trouble keeping sealed grand jury testimony a secret... take a look at the BALCO investigation and the shit-storm it has generated with the baseball/steroid thing... and thats not even important stuff.
this info needs to be public... if you want it to stay out of the public eye to allow for unbiased jury selection then you must do more to keep it public than tell everyone who comes to the public trial not to talk about it.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
How quaint.
There is currently a royal inquiry going on into some mishandling of federal advertisement contracts. A royal inquiry is similar to congressional hearings in the US, except this one is not lead by congressmen, but by a retired judge. When finished he gets to report back to parliament on his findings.
Now, some of the people subpeonaed to give testimony at the inquiry are also being charged with crimes related to the events under discussion. They will go to court in the next several months on those charges.
The publication ban was put in place to ensure things that these people say at the inquiry will not affect their chances of a fair jury trial. (Compare this to the baseball hearings where they players wanted immunity for their testimony, for many of the same reasons.) The ban will be ended after the jury has been sequestered, at which all that was said during the ban can be made public.
Note that this is only a publication ban -- it doesn't prevent people from actually going to the hearings to hear for themselves; it just attempts to limit what the jury pool will hear outside of the court case.
Publication bans are common in Canada, and typically have a similar duration and purpose -- to prevent the jury on high profile cases from getting the "facts" of the case from anywhere but the courtroom. The media typically fight the ban, and often win certain relaxations on the ban (you can report the events, but not identify the person giving testimony, etc.). In this case, Judge Gomery has said the media can ask at the end of each day what of that day's testimony can be released.
I'm generally in favour of such time limited bans, since they are designed to help ensure a fair trial. However, it looks like maintaining such bans is getting more and more difficult in the era of the Internet. Other cases where Canadian publication bans have been breached by American organizations include the Air India case (IIRC), and the Paul Bernardo case.
E.
A publication ban is the VERY DEFINITION OF CENSORSHIP. People have morphed the word and try to apply it to all kinds of other things (like a bookstore refusing to carry a book), but if the GOVERNMENT is BANNING PUBLICATION of something based on the CONTENT, then that is censorship.
You can make cases for why it's important and a good thing, and you can argue about that if you want, but I don't see how you can possibly claim that this isn't censorship.
hawk
The gag order applies to the jurors and the witnesses and is clearly stated to those testifying on their subpoena. Don't know about the jury, but probably similar there. The gag lasted for 3 months, and I was sent two renewals for an additional 3 months, for a total of 9 months of having to keep my mouth shut about some criminal insurance fraud.
The press would never be allowed into a closed grand jury session. How silly. Might as well put a bumpersticker with your credit card number and expiration date on your car too while you are at it there, Judge.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech
Ever since the Republicans came into power, the constitution just ain't what it used to be. So tell me, which side of the legal battle was Taricani on, or wasn't he a member of the public?
Free speech here appears to just cost $85,000 and the incarceration of a 55 year old heart transplant recipient. God bless the USA, she needs it.
For what its worth, I'm proud of this man. I'm happy that our country still has people who have the guts to stand up against a corrupt government doing corrupt things, without resorting to incoherent ranting or threats of violence.
Someone from the US is interested in Canadian politics? Weird.
Sure, ok, maybe I wrote too quickly. It's a form of censorship then.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
Only on /. could this be spun around and turned into an anti-American story. Had the roles been reversed, he would be lauded a hero. Since he's an American, it doesn't matter that he's circumventing a gag order in another country on secret court proceedings (that doesn't make you a tad nervous that they want secret trials?). American, therefore, he's the bad guy.
I'm sorry, I'm having a rotten day so I may not be understanding you. Are you seriously suggesting that the jury system should be abolished? What do you suggest it be replaced with?
Thats it! Ive had it with these polititions! Im moving to the USA.
Poor little fella (or missy). How can you bear it? How can you bear the rest of the world spending all its time thinking about you, and how much it wants to see you fail? Don't they have their own lives to live?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Both the prosecution and defense deserve a fair trial. This includes protecting potentially biasing information from leaking out into the general public, since that's where jurors, witnesses, etc come from. A publication ban does not mean that the result of the trial are kept secret. It is a legal measure in an attempt to guard fairness for the duration of a trial.
By the way, violating such a court imposed ban is a criminal offence and I believe you can be jailed for it in Canada.
Isn't it ironic. On the one had we hold a jury of our peers in high enough regard, that they are allowed to judge us, on the other we believe that allowing them to read a newspaper makes them unable to be objective in court.
In other countries, however, we sort of accept that the people aren't idiots, and that they know how to do things like weigh evidence and reach a reasoned verdict.
The answer to bad information is more information, not less. Trying, and failing, to keep important information away from the public smacks of tyranny to me.
I mean, let's not forget that this stuff is directly related to the elected government, huh? The people need this information to make good decisions when they vote.
It's not the Gomery proceedings that required the publication ban. It would be the provincial court cases against Guite and others that are ongoing in Quebec right now.
hooked up funny
But as with any rule: it was made to be broken. And as my soon to be lawyer wife says: The law doesn't make sense! That's why there are lawyers; to argue for YOUR SIDE of the law - ESPECIALLY when the law doesn't make sense for you.
In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce.
You're saying this like every bill, law and decision passed in the US makes sense.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
All of you commenting on the ban and saying "Aren't I glad I'm an American, I'm free" have clearly not read anything about the issue. The reason there's a ban is that the people testifying are up on criminal charges over the issue. The ban was requested on the grounds that publication might make it impossible to find an impartial jury. Now you may still disagree with that, but at least disagree having an f**ing clue about what you're disagreeing with!
I see your point, but I don't think I can call this censorship based on the fact that once the trial is over, the ban will be lifted and all information and trial proceedings can (and will be) published. This is not about denying the publics right to view information, its about trying to protect the rights of the accused (ie a fair trial).
It maight be good for the American audience here to know that the gag order applies to testimony at an inquiry, not to a trial.
The gag order, in this case, is to prevent any bias at the trial stage.
** Sig-a-licious **
They can always import Americans for the jury. Talk about impartial, they won't know, they won't care. Just snatch a bus of senior citizens picking up their prescriptions.
royal canadian MOUNTED police ;P
sum.zero
RTFA. Stop karma whoring.
And if Canada is resembling 1984, I don't know what US is resembling!
You're saying that like this one doesn't.
"This is essentially the judge saying to the press, "Look, if the whole world...yadda yadda...it's impossible to guarantee it won't come out, but Canadian journalists typically respect it." "
Press? Journalists?
I thought bloggers weren't included in these catagories?
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
Judging by what I read from the blog and the comments, the Liberal Party in Canada and the Conservative Party in the US have relatively same operating principles with one marked difference: The Canadian party is in serious danger of losing its power and having to face charges for its crimes. The US party has no such worries.
Yeah, apparently, kiwi has the same ethical standards.
Actually, once the jury is selected and the trial starts the ban will be lifted. From what I heard on the radio, it should be in like a month that the ban gets lifted
The universe is held together with duct tape and karma. What goes around, comes around, and gets stuck to your forehead.
Are you seriously suggesting that the jury system should be abolished? What do you suggest it be replaced with?
Guilt should be determined by professionals, i.e. judges, as in most parts of the civilized world. Professionals are less likely to be affected by their personal grudges and media campaigns.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com.nyud.net:8090
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com.nyud.net:8090
Will freedom of expression shrink to the lowest legal denominator? In order to be free of technical hassles and in compliance with all those countries that hobble freedom of expression in some way or other, will web sites simply constrain expression to match whatever country has the most restrictive standards?
Is this capitalism's flaw relative to freedom?
We've lost every war we've fought with Canada.
Every single one.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Same logic, right?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Heresay is the new loose.
In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce.
Doesn't the US deal with this problem by holding jury members in relative captivity, without access to mainstream media? This is barely acceptable either, and only if jury membership is truly voluntary. Nevertheless, it results in biased juries.
What the heck is up with the word "speach". It seems to be everywhere lately. Doesn't anyone know how to spell anymore?
Set atop two stumps are a pair of acorns. One acorn is marked Guilty, the other Innocent. The verdict is decided by which one the Squirrel chooses.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
... was that americans payed any attention to what's happening in canada ... man next thing you know canadians will be butting into american politics ... oh wait a sec ...
"Some of the worst mistakes in my life have been haircuts." - Jim Morrison
But don't you also need to ask if the publication ban is being used to shield the government from damaging news? The article indicates the government is using the time under the ban to force elections before the news can get out.
The are obviously using the ban in this case to avoid the political fallout, or at least do some major damage control.
Do the media bans only come into effect with high-profile crimes? Or does every crime go unreported until after the trial of the accused? I imagine it doesn't.
Save a life, sign your organ donor card.
First, we do not have grand juries in Canada and the trappings of secrecy therein, but we do have a process called preliminary inquiry which achieves the same function and is open to the public like all our courts are. Publication bans are routinely ordered to protect the rights of the accused until the conclusion of the trial.
Now the Gomery Inquiry is a legal tribunal initiated by parliament to investigate possible corruption surrounding advertising contracts given to certain agencies that are believed to be loyal to the ruling Liberal Party. Extremely damaging testimony was recently given by witnesses during the inquiry and the judge invoked a publication ban to protect the rights of those witnesses who face certain criminal prosecution. Note that the ban does not remain in force forever and, while I don't agree with it, the testimony will eventually be made public.
The crux of the matter is while the rights of potentially accussed persons are protected we are likely to face another election in the very near future before the information is made public. Without the knowledge of the testimony the public may be heading into an election with more questions than answers. Does the right of the public to know the substance of the allegations made during the inquiry outweigh the rights of accused persons?
I think the publication ban does more harm then good as speculation swirls around the subject and the real truth remains hidden. In the meantime, the Liberal minority goverment is probably happy with things the way they are considering the potential damange to their reputation.
Until you produce your above post in french as well, you can consider your warning null and void
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com.nyud.net:8090/ mt/archives/004220.php
What ever...
There is something wrong when the court cost for the discovery and investigation is now exceeding the abscam cost. Now Cnadian are spending more money for discovery and investigation. The only Canadians who are interested are the Quebec Separatist who lost the election to split off from Canada by slim vote.
Because we all know that there is no such thing as a corrupt judge. It's a lot harder to buy off 12 people, vs. 1.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
Via instapundit.. http://www.colbycosh.com/%23ctah/
Under the metaconstitutional Oakes test, any infringement of individual Charter liberties, such as a publication ban, must have a "rational connection" to the intended benefit and must be the most minimally restrictive measure that can bring about the benefit. The argument here is that if a ban doesn't work in practice--say, because American webloggers are all printing the mind-blowing stuff Canadian ones cannot--it can't meet Oakes. With due respect to the ban, which I consider myself to have observed herein, it would actively help free the hands of Canadian webloggers and reporters if our foreign cousins were to be aggressive about "publishing" the substance of the Brault testimony outside the reach of Canadian law.
I shouldn't feed the troll.. but here goes anyways.
Almost all countries that attempt to administer fair trials have processes in place to weed out biased jurors. Pre-trial information can bias a juror since people form opinions based on incomplete information. Someone who already has an opinion formed is by definition biased since it is much more difficult to change someone's opinion than it is to reaffirm their current opinion.
Yes the Canadian Press website does not provide a link to the blog article, but they posted the FULL TITLE of the blog article!. A quick google search and voila! Does that count as violation of the publication ban?
If they had instead chosen to report on a 'blog' that broke the publication ban and had NOT included the title - the information would have not been 'easily' accessible.
I read this blog regularly.
I'll say that he's a conservative hack, highly politicized and his commenters more so, but he is generally not an attention whore. Actually, reading the comments always reminds me of the Limbaugh era with the dittoheads (ugh).
Anyway, I found his blog (I was looking for the other side's propaganda) as he won some strange blog award for best conservative blog(who knew there were such things) but he had little more than a gee whiz post concerning it as opposed to what you would expect for an attention grubber.
A hissy fit? Oh...you mean reporting FACTS...can't seem to get over rathergate can ya?
...OHHHH...you mean the DOCTORS?!?!..or most of the EMPLOYABLE YOUTH??
"smearing more lies on the internet"
What lies?!?! Just leaked info from a supposedly PUBLIC inquiry which they've made NON-PUBLIC...no, no democracy problems there(all hail kanukistan)
"...most Canadians have common sense and decency and will completely ignore this crap"
They'll ignore it because they're waiting in hospital lines, drinking shitty beer(yes, shitty) or watching hockey(whatever reruns they can,HA)
"The less intelligent Canadians emigrate to the U.S."
As a canadian who has seen the most successful people in this province move to the states in order to pay off student loans/get a decent job/get REAL healthcare and JUST LIVE BETTER LIVES...I'd say you are completely full of shit.
Is the witnesses could have exercised their constitutional right to not testify against themselves (similar to the U.S. constitution). Then, if the inquiry desired to do so (I assume), they could have compelled their testimony in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
If I was a witness before the inquiry and faced criminal charges that is what I would have done. No publication ban, no trial, no problem (maybe).
The cries of censorship seem a bit overblown to me. This isn't a perminant ban, just a temporary gag order, much like those issued daily in U.S. courts. All it says is that the information needs to be held until a jury is selected and sequestered for the upcoming (about a month) trials.
They're allowing reporters and photographers. Presumably, those stories and photos may be published once a fair trial can be assured.
Nobody likes these gag orders, but you can't select an impartial jury once details of a case have been all over national news and everyone has formed an opinion based on the news. As important as freedom of the press is, a fair trial by an impartial jury is also important.
The thing to watch for with gag orders is not their existance, but if they are, in fact, lifted as soon as is possable. I guess we'll know in this case in a month or two.
Canadians have a serious problem: corruption in government, with money being funneled in illegal ways.
This scandal implicates the previous prime-minister, the current prime-minister, and a slew of relatively wealthy people.
A huge inquiry ensues, and costs an amount similar to the amount of money that was originally stolen (perhaps, misused is a better word). In particular, around 250 million is supposedly improperly accounted for, and the commission investigating the problem is costing another 130 million.
Since the inquiry isn't a criminal case against the individuals involved, the commissioner in charge of the inquiry has asked that journalists not publicise the events, so that an unbiased jury can be found for the real criminal proceeedings.
Members of the public are still welcome to go see the events, just not to publicly report them. (keep in mind that until the publication ban was put in place, the TV channel with the live hearings was getting amazing ratings in Quebec- hence constituting a serious problem for finding an unbiased jury)
I think it is pretty sad that someone finds it necessary to publicise their own version of events on their blog, in defiance of the ban, because it presents all kinds of problems in actually prosecuting the people who have allegedly committed serious crimes.
As per the slashdotting, a pity even the slashdot effect hasn't torn the site down.
The whole freedom of speech issue is not really a big problem for most people I know in Montreal, as there is no permanent secrecy being imposed. The events being investigated happened several years ago, and it doesn't make a huge difference if the details are known today or in a few months- except for the prosecution aspect.
The really scary freedom restrictions here are the 'security certificates' which allow the government to throw people in jail, and not tell people what evidence they are being convicted with.
Then again, the same thing seems to happen in the US, only justified with terms like 'enemy combatant', instead of 'security certificate'.
Personally, I wouldn't see a problem with abolishing juries.
Juried trials suck. I've had to sit on one twice now.
The first, I had to see a man retried because a DA and a police office brought in unrelated past events to cause a mistrial when their case was going bad. We were considered too ignorant to disregard this, even though almost all of us had already determined that the man was innocent even before the defense had a chance to go. We were considered too immature to talk about it while we were at lunch (though we did, because it was just so assinine) and then dismissed after the obvious attempt at prejudicing the system or having a mistrial. We actually talked to the judge and admitted we talked about this at lunch (noting that we could have all been held in contempt) because we didn't want to see a stupid, but innocent man tried again -- and she agreed with us, but said the rule of law was she had to call a mistrial.
The second it was obvious that any thinking man was trying to get off the jury duty and I was left with a bunch of inbreds that couldn't be concerned with the fate of their unzipped flys, let along another man's fate. And then the lawyers actively took anyone else off that looked like they might understand. I answered monosylabatic answers and didn't elaborate too much and got on. I listed the barest minimum of my job title and didn't say much more than that.
That too was a mistrial because I and another weren't going to change our vote from guilty just because the others didn't understand science. The lawyers on BOTH sides tried to make it sound like Magic or Straight From The Lawrd without actually getting into the real idea of what they were talking about. If I didn't know the techniques already, I wouldn't have known what the fuck they were talking about.
Face it, as the jury system stands, an overhaul couldn't work. An abolition of it and MAYBE some elements of it reinstated. In the US we have a quaint belief that all men are created equal. This might be true, but within as few as five years, we are no longer equal under god or societies eyes. CREATED equal and being equal are two seperate items.
For instance, there were some serious medical items being thrown around. I dated a doctor for 3 years and learned a lot from her. Sadly, she would never have been chosen to be on that jury because she would be considered prejudicial. How is education prejudicial??? There were some legal arguments that were thrown out that were in left field. I've had several classed in the field of law because of what I do for a living and have to protect myself. If I were myself a lawyer, I wouldn't have been allowed on because I would have known what the hell these two idiots were screaming about.
So yeah, the jury system needs to be abolished as it is known today. Professionals need to be put on trial, and we need to expect them to act in their professional interests. Maybe as a professional, you are even REQUIRED to be a jury member once every 2 years to keep certification. I have to take ContEd classes every year to keep my licenses up to date, why not make public service a requirement as well. Or just pay the guys to do it their daily rate as averaged by last years tax returns.
The last person I want on a jury is the guy that has nothing else to do with his life but get on a jury. But those are the only ones we see.
So yeah, lets get rid of it. And lets get rid of idiots that say things like "Are you seriously suggesting that the jury system should be abolished?" because they sound like idiots that are afraid that someone might judge them that actually knows whats going on. Ok, thats trollish -- but your attitude denotes that you've taken a civics class and got a B and think you understand everything about gov't just because someone told you its right. Then again, I could be reading a lot into a single sentence.
And no, I'm not basing my entire arguements on 2 cases as that too would be moronic as any other antecdotal evidence. They are merely examples of real world incompetence...
So the public can observe the proceedings, as long as nobody tells anybody else?
A secret simply cannot be contained this way. It sounds like they're relying on people to be honest - the data isn't even watermarked individually in each person's brain - so how can they really be surprised?
It sounds like they don't have a problem with the entire population of Canada being present (barring physical restrictions) but for some reason replicating the information later is bad.
Come on! If you don't want information to get out, restrict access to it. The story here is not that what happened; it's the broken security itself.
P.S. Let me get this straight: If I attend the proceedings, I'm not allowed to tell anybody? Even a spouse? Or am I only allowed to tell people I meet in person? Is it legal to send snail mail regarding the experience? email? send it to a mailing list? Is it OK as long as I don't do this for a living?
The whole thing seems to be based on the distinction between members of the press and non-publicators. This distinction is arbitrary and archaic.
Nope, we're too busy speaching.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Pre-trial information can bias a juror since people form opinions based on incomplete information.
And what about situations where the jurors aren't provided complete information DURING the trial?
"What the jury wasn't told is that the defendant has twelve prior convictions for raping sixteen-year old girls." Pardon me?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
So if the squirrel gets eaten by a bird do you call it a mistrial?
In Canada for most crimes the defence has the right to elect to have a trial by judge alone.
Juries are only mandatory for certain offences, I believe murder and attempted murder are examples of those.
AFAIK: For any offence with a max sentence less than 5 years you aren't even entitled to a jury trial.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
So... this is an American blog by an American, yet it breaks a Canadian publication law, and that's bad? :-/
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
Because we all know that there is no such thing as a corrupt judge. It's a lot harder to buy off 12 people, vs. 1.
In other jurisdiction, significant crimes deserve multiple judges. And both the prosectution and the defendant can appeal. This is rather expensive for the public, and I hope we can continue to afford it, at least for serious crime (it helps if you have less, of course).
In other news, Internet news source http://www.slashdot.org/ Breaches Canadian Publication Ban.
Jury duty is pretty much compulsory. Unless you can give the judge and attorneys good reason to drop you, make them think you are biased for or against the plaintiff, or convince them you are fricken insane you have to attend.
But who chooses which acorn is which? I suggest we get a group of 12 people to deliberate about if for several days, and then, only after they choose, is the squirle let out to get one, upon which they imediately proclaim which was which.
Sig
blocking members of the public from speaking about what they witness... would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce.
But isn't that exactly what the DMCA does?
"Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge" - Erwin Knoll
How often do you find IT stories badly reported in the media? Sensationalized because it sells more copy? First impressions count.
On the other hand, these bans are pretty much irrelevant with the internet available. Might make being an "internet user" reason to be dismissed from a jury selection process...
Speaker: The Right Honourable Prime Minister.
Paul Martin: Mr Speaker
Some Member: Guilty!
Speaker: Order, order. The Right Honorable Prime Minister has the floor.
Rt. Hon. Paul Martin, Prime Minister: Mr Speaker, the Liberal Party consists of thousands of men and women, in Quebec and right across this country, who are dedicated to the Liberal Party and to their country. They work day in and day out, Mr Speaker, for the benefit of Canadians, and Mr Speaker, those members of the Liberal party should not have to bear the rumours, Mr Speaker, or the burden of the activities of a very small few who may have colluded against the Party and against, Mr Speaker, the well being of Canadians, and we will defend, Mr Speaker, those Liberals. These are Canadians, Mr Speaker, who have given their all for this country.
Some Member: Hear, hear.
Speaker: [inaudible] the Opposition.
Stephen Harper: Mr Speaker, the judge, police, and Canadians will be the judge of how involved the Liberal party is.
On another subject, last week Canadians finally learned the details of the brutal torture and murder of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi. Now it turns out, for months the Prime Minister knew the true extent of the brutality inflicted upon Ms Kazemi. Instead of taking a firm stand against Iran, he sent our ambassador back to that oppressive regime. What kind of callous, spineless government reestablishes normal diplomatic relations with this kind of regime?
Speaker: Hon. Prime Minister.
Paul Martin: [inaudible] ... respond first to the preamble. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that Candians do de-- [aside] are Americans -- that Canadians should have the facts, Mr Speaker, and that is why I called for the Gomery commission, that is why this government, Mr Speaker, put that commission in place, Mr Speaker, it is precisely to have those facts, and that's why there should not be an election until Justice Gomery has reported, because Canadians deserve to know the facts.
Now, Mr Speaker, if I may respond to the Honourable Member's question, if the baying on the other side... the member has asked a question, ....
Speaker: I'm afraid the Right Honourable Prime Minister has used up the time responding to the preamble, but I suspect there might be a supplementary question, may be a supplementary question from the Honourable Leader of the Opposition.
Stephen Harper: Mr Speaker, may I just say that that is a perfect example of what is wrong with this government. They should have used this opportunity to defend a Canadian citizen, not the Liberal party.
[continues re Iran]
Here in America, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial depends on the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately. It never occurred to me that someone would think that the government's ability to keep secret the court proceedings against its citizens is a Good Thing. Interesting.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Where did this guy get access to this testimony? Who provided it to him and for what purpose?
Now that it's out there, that's the real question.
Mirrored links in case of slowness
nnet writes "The Toronto Sun is reporting that a U.S. blogger has been breaching a Canadian publication ban on AdScam. While The Sun hasn't given the URL for the blog itself, in fear of a contempt of court charge, this isn't the first time an American has breached a Canadian publication ban according to the article." The Sun story, though, does give a nice title for which to search, and this quickly yields the story in question.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
But don't you also need to ask if the publication ban is being used to shield the government from damaging news? The article indicates the government is using the time under the ban to force elections before the news can get out.
Yes, that's an important question. In this case, though, any article that "indicates" that the government is using the time to any particular purpose is indulging in pure speculation.
No one outside the government knows what the government is planning to do, election-wise.
What the government says is actually "Let's let the commission finish its work so that voters can make up their minds based on the facts instead of rumors."
That may be spun all to hell, but it sounds to me like they want to buy time before there's an election. In fact, IMO it makes more sense to conclude that the government is hampered by the ban: with the testimony floating around in the form of rumours, its ability to spin-doctor and sacrifice scapegoats is severely hampered. It will all come out, openly and freely, sooner or later. The longer the time between the reveal and the election, the better for the government.
The are obviously using the ban in this case to avoid the political fallout, or at least do some major damage control.
Everyone is assuming that, but it's not obvious to me. Exactly what is happening and why is subject to much speculation, some of it reasonably well-informed, some of it terribly naive.
Do the media bans only come into effect with high-profile crimes? Or does every crime go unreported until after the trial of the accused? I imagine it doesn't.
It's never automatic, and it's not every high-profile case that is subject to one. And of course there wouldn't be much point in such a ban for a low-profile case, would there? Where the profile is low, the media simply fails to provide coverage. Sometimes there are even partial bans, leading to partial reporting of cases in progress.
And there are restrictions that apply in all criminal cases: no cameras in the courtroom, no revealing the identity of juvenile accused (unless being tried as an adult), no reporting that would identify a juvenile victim.
So far, Small Dead Animals is still covering it.
So is Angry in the Great White North, who writes:
You are correct for the most part, but I think there is relevance here due to the Canadian system.
If the Liberal party can suppress this unfavorable information long enough to hold a new election for themselves (as this is a parlimentary system and terms are not specifically fixed), they could be already elected by the time any nasty details came out!
Its like sweeping your dirt underneath a rug until just after your relatives leave.
The jury system is part of our many safeguards against tyranny. Juries are picked from the populace at large; they're not staffed by professionals who were appointed or elected.
Think of the jury as the last line of common sense before a prison sentence.
One might instead ask what's more important... the right of a single individual to a fair trial or the right of the public to have timely information about corrupt behavior by their elected official?
These issues are not unknown here in the U.S., and we almost always have managed to find untainted juries, or juries of sensible people who can obey the law and leave any prior knowledge of the case at the courthouse door. In the final resort, the accused's right to a fair trial can be protected by dismissing the charges against him, as happened with Ollie North (whose immunized Congressional testimony was released to the public).
"What the jury wasn't told is that the defendant has twelve prior convictions for raping sixteen-year old girls." Pardon me?
The reason for not revealing past convictions is to prevent the police simply rounding up the usual suspects and getting a conviction on weak evidence as jurors would assume that if they have done it in the past they must have done it this time.
You may or may not agree that this is a good reason to withhold this information but it would make a fair trial very difficult if it was routinely revealed.
A somewhat similar thing happened during the CDN media blackout of the trial of the infamous Carla Homolka. There was a complete media blackout in Canada, and suddenly a newsgroup which Paul Vixie had newgrouped for me back when I was feeling a bit blue (alt.fan.shedevil) was taken over by a bunch of Canadians desparate for news of what was going on, and a place to talk about it, and which was beyond the reach of the CDN authorities. Wow..it's still archived in Google groups!: http://aunty-spam.com/ref/carla-homka-alt.fan.shed evil (URL redirected because the Google url is so darned long.)
I have been doing a lot of research on this story and have a good roundup at my blog.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
...that breaking the publication ban would make it impossible to find a dozen unbiased people anywhere in the country.
It would be interesting to live in a place where universal snap judgments were common.
Jury duty is pretty much compulsory. Unless you can give the judge and attorneys good reason to drop you, make them think you are biased for or against the plaintiff, or convince them you are fricken insane you have to attend.
Uh-oh, then I prefer publication bans to sequestration.
We have hobbyist judges in Germany, too, but as judges, they can ask questions, and this tends to cause problems. At least there's an easy way to be dismissed: just refer to the defendant as "perpretator" or "offender", showing your bias. Unfortunately, too many hobbyist do this unintentionally (which quite understandable).
I hope that the jury chosen for the sperate cases of these people wouldn't be stupid enough to only rely on what that blog says. The "Republican National Convention Offical Blogger" and "Blogs for Bush" images sure reveal his conservative, anti-liberal bias. The whole thing pretty much just says "Liberals are evil, elect conservatives".
I seem to recall that China treats corruption as a treasonous offense punishable by death. Perhaps if we took a page from that book these stories wouldn't pop up so frequently. Or if they did, they'd all end with "All the offending officials have been taken out and shot." Same thing should go for corporate upper management too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I believe that a jury should be entitled to any and all information that will allow them to come to a reasonable and correct verdict.
If we entrust the jury to make decisions regarding the truthfulness of the testimony, why don't we trust them enough to provide them with so-called "prejudicial information" and let them decide what weight to put on it as well?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Same logic, right?
You people get so damn ridiculous sometimes. Such comments, mine included, are really pitiful. Just shut up when you got nothing to say. And please, don't tell me your point of view is objective ; it's politics, and you're part of the population, right?
The Fifth amendment is an American thing. Here, a witness CANNOT refuse to testify - i.e. at a government equiry. Instead, the testimony they give cannot be used against them in their trial. Slightly quaint... It would seem to me the ideal would be to get the testimony on the record as soon as possible, so that "fruit of the poisoned tree" rule takes effect on all its implications.
While I'm all for free speech, one's right to free speech ends where another's civil liberties begin. This publication ban was an expression of the right of the accused to have a fair trial.
It's a wonder that so many people have so little respect for another's civil rights, they must not care that much about their own.
More to the point; publication bans are broken all the time, and that's okay. The problem isn't that it was reported somewhere; it's that the breach is being reported far and wide. This isn't news.
The only reason this got play is because it was a blog. Who cares? I can't wait for blogging to get old (it already is).
You're right this wouldn't be reported but for the ban, and that's the problem.
I'm pleasantly surprised to see a restrained and balanced response in this thread.
You're suggesting that it's impossible for a defendant (or plaintiff) to disprove/discredit a newspaper's reports. This would only happen with evidence that was suppressed (for whatever reason).
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
It's a balance. This isn't going to be secret forever, only for a short period of time (I guess a month in this case).
This whole deal is a self-regulated thing. There is a publication ban, but as it has been said before, it's not a closed court. People *can* get in there and see what's going on. If something particularly heinous happens, I rest assured that it will surface to the general public, publication ban or not.
As I mentioned early, it's entirely an honour-system thing. Nothing would stop someone from publishing something truly scandalous anonymously and thus avoiding any repercussions at a later date.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
It's much easier than that. Just get a bunch of Americans and Europeans to volunteer to be on the jury. I mean, most Americans have only the vaguest notion of where Canada is even located. Europeans in my experience know where Canada is, but unless they're French they don't see any reason why anyone would want to go there.
Speaking personally, I've visited Canada twice and have every intention of visiting again, but I'm prepared to admit that I have no clue whatsoever what the Gomery inquiry is, or what kind of guy Chretien is. (I've heard the name, I remember that he is or was a Canadian politician, but that's about it.)
So if Canada needs a jury, I'd be glad to offer my services as a completely ignorant neutral member of the jury. All they need to do is pay for the plane ticket, my accomodations, and arrange with my employers to get me the time off work.
If I committed a crime in Canada, I'd be tried before a jury of foreign nationals--i.e. Canadians. If a Canadian committed a crime in the US, he'd be tried before a jury of non-Canadians. So I don't see why a Canadian alleged to have committed crimes in Canada shouldn't be tried before a jury of foreign nationals, if that's the best way to ensure that he gets a fair trial.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
As the CIA factbook used to point out up until very recently, Quebec nationalism was a significant risk factor.
Consider that the alternative to the Liberals is the Block Quebecois Smuf Blue separatist in collusion with the Western Redneck from the Conservatives party many of whom are eager to kick Quebec out to get back their english only CornFlakes boxes. Coupled with the fact that the Liberals, only federalist party in Quebec have already lost their upcoming elections, you will have, for the first time in Canadian history, a seperatist gouverment in Quebec with a federal gouverment incapable and not particularly interested in keeping Quebec.
Things will be a lot more volatile in Canada in the next 5 years.
Ahhh, Montreal. Surely someone will be bringing up the politics of the Separatist Francaphones, perhaps a little of their history? (was it '72?)
How can people actually be surprized at the corruption of our top officials (whether you're in US, UK or Canada)?????????? The testimony given by Jeanny (chretien) during this enquiry was brutally ignorant and a great example of 'justice at work.' I can just see him and his Liberal Party homies sautering around Montreal setting up these deals for a bunch of his old McGill University (Bishops?) buddies. We're all holding out hope that the new PM and his Liberals are not like Jeanny in this sense, but I seem to remember something about a ship or a fleet or something.. best block that out of my memory I guess, because Prime Minister Paul Martin is 'running the entire country' from out there in the uber-important and uber-relevant Capital City Ottawa (sarcasm)
I won't be reading any more of this story though because I believe it to be very biased and perhaps even untrue (and perfectly explainable if you trust jeanny completely, like more than 50% of the country does, and 'understand' that this program was there to ensure that Quebec did not separate.)
This whole thing (sponsorship scandal) is a time and money wasting attention getter if you ask me. Also, if you ask me, Quebec does have a distinct society, especially those nutso separatists. Saskatchewan, Calgary (yuck), and The Yukon also have distinct societies though, but the Weed isn't as overwhelmingly bad for your brain, or something.
I believe part of the idea behind the jury system is that laws will need to be simple enough to be understood by 12 laymen who will then pass judgement.
Notice how other tax law and copyright law are so damned complicated when compared to criminal law?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Temporary imprisonment is still imprisonment.
Temporary censorship is still censorship.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
No, I'm suggesting that reports do bias people, and newspapers aren't known for their lack of bias themselves. Take the Michael Jackson trial. Those who thought he was guilty first time round think he is this time, and those who don't still believe the same. Not many folk have shifted positions. You'd need a psychiatrist to explain how it all works, but I'm not one. Suffice to say, you base your opinions on your knowledge, subconsiously and consiously. It that knowledge is polluted, so is your bias. Not many people can be truly objective and step back & view from an independent standpoint. Slashdot itself is proof-positive of this, people post stupid incendary comments without reading the article. What if they were on a jury? It's going to be harder to sway them, and that's not fair on the accused.
But hey, don't shoot the messenger. Both sides of the argument are flawed!
He's a neocon, or at least a neocon sympathizer, which makes anything he says highly suspect.
I suppose that means you can take everything Michael Moore says at face value? If a socialist says the sky is pink at high noon on a clear day it must be so? Unless the source clearly has something to gain from publishing certain information you might want to put your prejudice aside and look at things deeper.
FYI, without mentioning the details themselves, "real journalists" have confirmed that this report is completely accurate--journalists employed by a company owned by major Liberal party supporters no less. Slanted site sponsors notwithstanding the report looked to me to be surprisingly balanced. There is some editorialising but a remarkable absence of ideological bias. The article could've been written word-for-word by an NDP supporter (NDP is Canada's socialist party) just as much as could've been written by a Conservative.
IMHO "AdScam" is not an ideological debate with small-gov't "neocons" whining about big gov't make-work projects (that is only one small facet). It is a debate about openness and ethics first and foremost by far. Ask NDP supporters and they will be just as critical as a Conservative about the honesty and openness of the Liberal government--or lack thereof. Whatever your political leanings, if you are Canadian you would do well to follow this story, regardless of whether the source represents your political values. The average citizen would be astonished at how corrupt the Canadian gov't is and how long it has been that way. Perhaps that would motivate voters to get off their asses and vote next election.
The point of SDI was not to militarize space, but rather to frighten the Russians into spending their resources inappropriately and ultimately bankrupt them. Missile defense does the same thing to the North Koreans and Iranians. If they think they need 10 warheads to get one through, then need to keep wasting their resources on building warheads even while they know they are about to collapse economically.
Canadians don't live in caves - bears live in caves. Canadians live in igloos, eh.
*laughing at work*
That was WAY funnier than the great-grandparent!
In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce
I would agree except the US doesn't seem to care a whole lot about what is and is not constitutional with the passing of the USA PATRIOT ACT...
Some publication bans make more sense than others. This one doesn't, so I can't argue.
But I can think of a good one - the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trials (google if you're not a Canuck and haven't heard of them). Homolka got put on trial first and all the lawyers involved pushed for a quick plea bargain so she could testify against Bernardo. If you know about the case already, try to forget the fact that she totally got a sweetheart deal and really deserved to rot. But back then there wasn't any other firm evidence against Bernardo and the prosecutor was relying on her testimony. But they couldn't detail the crimes she was pleading to in open court - they were so horrible, so sensational, that noone would talk about anything else and Bernardo most likely would have been convicted in the eyes of everyone before he even made it to trial. He was a smart guy with high-profile lawyers... if there was a chance to appeal or get the charges dismissed, he would have jumped at it.
Shortly after Homolka got her plea bargain (she got about 10yrs IIRC), they found videotapes the couple had made while torturing and raping their victims. The evidence there alone was enough to put them both away forever. Homolka was only used in the end to convict him of some other crimes for which they didn't have much evidence (he was a serial rapist for a decade before he graduated to murder). But at the time, before knowing the extent of Homolka's involvement, me and most other Canadians agreed that Bernardo needed every possible guarantee of a fair trial in order to ensure that there was no way he (if guilty) could ever get out.
Yes, but this is not a trial. It is an inquiry, but not a criminal investigation. If you RTFA, you'll see that the ban is to allow a fair trial to happen in the future.
Dude, you need to stop getting your news from Fox. Your country is on the brink of totalitarianism. The fear and jingoism (er.. sorry.. "patriotism") that you guys promote is disgusting.
Withdraw from Iraq and stop pissing in everyone else's pool please.
That is the problem with missile defense. You have to ask yourself how difficult it would be to fool the system.
No I don't, not when you can easily make enough defense missles to take out all nine fake warheads plus the real one. It's cheaper to make 100 anti-missle missles than one real nuclear missle w fake warheads option.
Not to mention that in the current world we are in, we are not talking about a flood a missles but really a pretty limited number from any given country that is even remotley likley to fire them. And we are not even talking about guarding the US so much as a lot of allies.
Basically I agree with the first poster, there is no reason to think that a pretty solid anti-missle system cannot eventually be developed and put in place. And frankly I'd rather see funds go to that end than something like improving nuclear weapons as they are, so an anti-missle program is something to be encouraged.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
....Canada is where we ran to for protection (i.e. when the draft hits). WTF is this guy doing ruining all of our military-fleeing, pot-smoking dreams!
-Valiss
Sounds like Canada needs US style grand jury investigations. You know, with gag orders on everyone involved inside the courtroom with no media access.
The quaintness doesn't arise from the fact that an judicial inquiry can lead to a biased jury and hence you keep it secret. It's from the fact that it's a PUBLIC inquiry, with full media access, cameras and common people off the street in the room that can't talked about. It's unreasable and violates all notions of common sense.
Burn Hollywood Burn
It doesn't matter if a hundred people witness the testimony, who then tell a thousand of their friends, who then share it with ten thousand of their neighbors. That still leaves millions of people who don't know, that you can select a jury from.
You just don't want it on all the morning papers and on the 6 o'clock news where EVERYBODY will see it, because that makes it really hard to find enough impartial jurors.
especially considering you need to miss-pronounce Nunavut (Noo - na - voot) to get it.
Well - for what it's worth... his freedom of speech could have two negative outcomes:
1) the guy testifying would have completely biased his own court case - meaning that he has no chance of a fair trial (we don't have the fifth ammendment)
2) the guy's testimony could get thrown out... making it simple for the government corruption to go unpunished.
BlackNova Traders
The CBC is known the world over for being rather responsible with their reporting.
Whether a broadcaster gets their funding from the gov't or a mega-corp has little to do with their conduct.
With such secrecy becoming ever more common down south too, think of it as a mutual public service.
Using a press release by the manufacturer is hardly a reliable source. For example the 5/6 isn't including the two times it inexplicably failed to launch. Incidentally since tests resumed in Dec/04 after a two-year hiatus, they've had one success two failures.
I'm unsure whether the following is correct:
-US Military stopped televising tests due to failures
-the only successful tests were with interceptors with advanced knowledge of target trajectory.
... because that works SO WELL in Iran.
Pursuing the small at the cost of the large.What sometimes escapes people is the government's ability to get the small right as well.
However sometimes they use it to cover the large. In this case there is some very serious trouble going on.
There are two easy ways to get out of jury duty:
1) Don't register to vote. Then you'll never get called. no big loss, since from a purely individualistic point of view, voting is a waste of time (think about the error margins of vote counting machines).
2) When you show up for jury selection, start passing out pamphelts about "jury nullification". That will get you thrown out real fast.
A few years ago, several US papers covered a Canadian trial in defiance of a Canadian publication ban. That trial was a sensational double rape-murder, i.e. was interesting enough to defy the publication ban.
With publication bans, hate speech laws and the CRTC who control what Canadians can see and hear how can anyone consider it a free country? The amazing part is that Canadians (I know because I am one but I don't share this view) see themselves as being superior to the US, especially concerning freedom. Many Canadians also believe our system of government is more democratic but it's absolutely not the case at all. Most Canadians don't even realize that our Prime Minister isn't even the real holder of executive power! In fact the Queen of England and her representative is! What a backwards idiotic country this is!
So what else is new?
> we almost always have managed to find untainted juries, or juries of
> sensible people who can obey the law and leave any prior knowledge of
> the case at the courthouse door.
I once had a drunken discussion of publication bans with a few Canadian lawyers. They used the OJ Simpson case as an example of what happens without publication bans.
We also sequester juries, but the juries for these criminal trials haven't been picked yet.
2 139257), here's some junk text.
The original plan was for the publication ban to expire once the juries were picked and sequestered.
fucking slashdot won't let me duplicate my old post (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144947&cid=1
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!
Um... Err, wait...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Tax law is indeed complicated, to the tune of 88,000 pages of legislation.
Copyright law, on the other hand, is very simple. The entire text of Circ 92, comprising all of Title 17, the Berne Convention and all other relevant national and international laws governing copyright is only 289 pages long. That's the entire body of law, everything.
That's very easy to understand in relative terms.
Just keep the sneaking across the boarder to a minimum and we'll be too busy invading Mexico in a few years to think of you guys as anything but "the good neighbor." I for one look forward to a tropical America with an easy to control isthmus, where no one speaks spanish.
You can't say anything bad about Canada because USA IS TEH BAD INFINITY FOREVAR.
Thanks for proving my point, muppet.
Nice posts elsewhere here about it being a politically engineered leak. Anything to divert the whiff of wrongdoing by any left-of-center government.
We should leave the poor North Koreans alone! If they want to reduce Seoul to a "Sea of Fire" it's their business! The south koreans don't want us there, the north koreans don't want us their, we don't want us there, and the horrible deaths of 10 or so million people is a small price to pay so that we can all be happy. Damn American Imperialism!!
Spoken like somebody who has no clue what is contained in either document.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Guilt should be determined by professionals, i.e. judges, as in most parts of the civilized world.
FWIW, Japan is in the process of switching from trial decided by judges to trials decided by juries.
Or do you not consider Japan "civilized?"
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
So you're saying that censorship ("publication bans") is common in Canada? And you guys look down your nose at US?
I would agree except the US doesn't seem to care a whole lot about what is and is not constitutional with the passing of the USA PATRIOT ACT.
The Patriot Act takes away the right to bear arms, and the right for women to vote, and reinstates slavery? Wow. Who knew?
Lemme guess... I'm just feeding another troll.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I've always felt that a consumption tax is inherently fair. The more you consume, the more tax you pay. And I think that Chretien's election promise to scrap the GST was one of the crassest political ploys I've ever witnessed.
FWIW, Japan is in the process of switching from trial decided by judges to trials decided by juries.
Interesting. Japan has (for a democracy) rather unique problems with its justice system, though, so a radical change could actually result in an improvement.
Or do you not consider Japan "civilized?"
Believe it or not, I still consider the U.S. part of the civilized world.
In an attempt to preserve a fair trial for those facing crimminal charges, the judge posted a publication ban on the evidence before the court (so as not to taint potential jurors). As most Americans (and others) are cheerful to point out: the ban does not apply to them. Their "we demand to know dammit" method crushes any possibility of a fair trial. Worse: it could now be argued that since any potential could be tainted, there may be no way of having a fair trial (and therefore no possability of convictions for those facing charges dammit!)! Which is too bad. There are some who really deserve to go down for this one (and the current minority-government is facing a vote of non-confidence, and a snap election because of it).
Has the guy been charged? Issued with a bench warrant? Has the Crown issued a request to the US authorities to have the guy extradited? Newp. And they probably won't either.
In related news, the US has never tried to impose their laws on citizens of other countries in other countries.
In Canada [...] Juries are only mandatory for certain offences, I believe murder and attempted murder are examples of those.
Even for crimes like murder, you can get a trial-by-judge in cases where the evidence is deemed to be too complicated for a jury to understand. The Air India trial is a good example of this.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Better correct the record huh? Oh, sorry, you can't as there is a ban on reporting on things. HTH. HAND.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The right to freedom of speech (or in this case, probably, more accurately, freedom of the press) is balanced, here, against the rights of an accused to a fair trial. And Canada has chosen a different balancing point than the US in this issue.
No one is being prevented from attending, no one is being prevented from talking about it, or writing to each other about it. The press are fully able to attend the inquiry. The only limitation is to hold off publishing/broadcasting about it until the trial has concluded.
This is another area where the difference between "Peace, Order and Good Government" and "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" lead to differences between the countries.
Now, if you wanted to jump on Canada for censorship, then there's plenty of material to choose from -- Ministirial "security certificates" through which a foreigner can be detained, indefiniately, on a Minister's say-so is a good one. Althouh there is judicial review, frequently neither the accused, nor his counsel, will get to hear the meat of the case against him.
So if you want to complain about Canadian government censorship, go ahead, but choose a different case.
Oh, yeah, and we still look down our nose at the US.
E.
FYI, if you RTFA, the blogger is not American, he is Canadian, hosting his content on a U.S. server.
:-)
Anyway kids, this is one of the great things about national sovereignty (as opposed to centralization and unification via, say, the United Nations):
Canada != U.S.
Canada's laws and judicial rulings don't apply in America any more than ours apply in Canada. There isn't a thing about our frosty-but-friendly neighbors to the north can do about it, except ask us (politely, no doubt) to remove the blog entry, but we don't have to comply unless we want to. Tough cookies for the Canadian judiciary. They can charge the blogger with contempt-of-court (which they're considering), but that's about it.
Still, IANAL. Whatever the law may be between the U.S. and Canada, the practical case is that the cat is out of the bag. The story is on the 'net, and the only way it's ever disappearing now is if people decide not to save it; there's no way the Canadian government can stop the story from spreading now, much as they may want to believe otherwise.
Just one nice example of why nations ought to remain separate and sovereign...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
If the Liberal Government called an election before the inquiry is over. Unlike the US, that act would be far more damaging then anything contained in the banned testemony.
I say unlike the US, because up there, the press relishes bringing governments down. Plus, the parlementary system makes it so that the Prime MInister HAS to answer questions from the opposition, and they aren't nice about it.
Contrast to down here, where one press outlit goes after another for being "Too Harsh" on the president. (Fox News on the Irish Times interview)
reasonable? well, certainly not realistic. any normal person will hear about high-profile cases like this. do you want to limit jurys to shut-ins without TV, radio, and internet access?
another option would be to trust people to listen to the evidence presented and make a decision on that. could you do that? i think i could.
The judge felt that the information should be published later instead of sooner, and I respect that decision. The last thing that we would want is a trial by media. Time and time again the media gets legal facts wrong in order to make the story more interesting. Often times if I hear about a court case, I will actually read court documents instead of relying on a news article. In any case, his decision was no different than what happens here in the USA. Judges routinely "seal" testimony for various reasons.
I think the original point is that we hypocritically trust our "peers" to make a sound judgement, but only if their weak minds are unbiased. How, if someone is that easily biased, will he or she correctly interpret a case? Vote for the side with the cutest attourney?
"Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do)."
Right than, I'll hop right on the next flight from Saskatoon and take in the proceedings. That this is "open to the public" is a sham. It is open to "some of the public", only those who have the means or proximity to actually take them in. Nice "public" inquiry.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
plase my friend in the US save US by invading canada
i am dead serious
Here in America, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial depends on the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately.
Well, far away places like Canada often have strange traditions.
You can't take the sky from me...
One would hope that the evidence presented by both sides would outweight anything the papers might have said.
> here in the U.S., and we almost always have managed to find untainted juries
Two letters. OJ.
but she is such a hot babe, id do her in a second...and i guess i would hope not to be murdered afterwards while sleeping
First, copyright the testimony. Sort of like the opening of sporting events.
Second, declare the press ban a security measure.
Finally, send the DCMA take-down notice to the ISP...
It's so easy. Just call the RIAA for help!
"Canada takes quite seriously the concept of making sure that suspects receive a fair trial."...unless you're a terrorist.
Just thought I'd throw that one in.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The US has elections at fixed intervals for fixed terms. Most other democracies, I believe, follow the parliamentary system, where the king, or president, who is the equivalent of an elected king, chooses someone from the party with the most memmbers of parliament to become prime minister, the equivalent of the US president. The prime minister picks various members of his party to become the ministers, unlike the US where cabinet secretaries are picked from anywhere.
The government thus formed has some fixed maximum time in office, say 5 years, but the prime minister can also call an election whenever he wants, usually when the polls look the best. In the current Canadian case, he may call elections soon so they can be held before the inquiry results are published. I think any election called by the prime minister before the time limit is a snap election.
Elections can also be forced by the opposition party mustering enough votes for a vote of no confidence, and possibly by the mostly powerless president or king dissolving the curent parliament.
But being from the US, I may well have things slightly cockeyed.
Infuriate left and right
Anything that slows down the transparency in government, or the free telling of the occurrences in government, is in essence, is censorship.
This just happens to be time censorship.
In America, there would have been cameras in the meetings and conversation all over the country. All this does is not make any public videotape available to those that would like to know, and helps minimize the impact and importance to the public.
Man, every time I screwed up, I would love to make everyone talk about this later so I could have enough time to set up alibis and work out counterarguments. Also, I would like for there to be no cameras, so in a short while, everyone would have nothing to see. Especially when the wanted to see my real face twisting to the lies and bad things I did.
*Poof* "It was all a dream, and happened long ago, and no one cared about it then, so why now?"
what the big deal is with all the censorship and damning the man. I'm still just flabberghasted that an american actually took time to be interested in anything we do up here.
There was video tape taken by one of the TV networks quoting Cretien saying that the Liberals would "get rid of" the GST.
The problem with the GST was not that it was a cash grab, it wasn't, it was at inception revenue neutral with the MST it replaced
It was not revenue neutral. There were huge cost overruns in bringing in the GST, on the order of large tens of millions of dollars. Yet even taking the cost overruns into account the GST brought in hundreds of millions of dollars more than "expected" in the first eight months.
The manufacturing sale tax was applied at the manufacturing level:
(manufacturer's price + 13% MST)*(150% for wholesaler's markup)*(200% for retailer's markup)
results in an effective tax rate of less than 4%.
And that is before you consider that the MST did not apply to all items, whereas the GST does.
And the MST rate varied depending upon the class of good: 13% was the maximum rate; most items were taxed at a lower rate.
And it was the Mulroney Conservative government that raised the maximum MST rate to 13% (it was below 10% previously IIRC).
And the Mulroney government changed the MST to apply to more classes of goods.
I wholeheartedly agree that a transparent tax is better than a hidden tax, and a consumption tax is better than an income tax or a wealth tax, but the GST was a tax grab.
</rant>
Peter (who posts too infrequently to bother creating an account)
In theory you are right, but invariably one side gets a say before the others, and that can influence an all-too naive public.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, you don't think this can be called "censorship" because censorship is bad and you consider these bans to be good. That's all there is to it.
FWIW, I agree with you. Due process rights and free speech rights are both constitutionally gauranteed rights. If they conflict, how do you proceed? This "balancing act" may very well be justifiable censorship. But, it is censorship nonetheless.
Then the question becomes, if it is temporary is it censorship? That's definitely an arguable point in my books, though I would tend to say its not censorship if it is only a temporary hold on publication presumably for the greater good.
This of course raises the real issue, which an AC brought up below. In this case, we have to balance the rights of the accused to have a fair and impartial jury versus the public's right to the information as it becomes available. I would side with the accused. A person's right to a fair, impartial jury is more important then my right to know the details of the case immediately
In any case, I can't disagree with the publication ban, when its temporary, and the rights of an indvidual may be jeopardized by publishing them early. The public will have a chance to see the evidence at a later date.
AS someone who has sat in the prosecutor's seat, let me respond. Ultimately, the jury system will be as competent as the citizenry are willing to make it. I would note that incompetent juries tend to favor defendants, and that's why they often do not elect to waive their right to jury trial and simply try the case to the judge, which is always an option. The jury system does have some quirks, such as selecting against people with special knowledge related to the case. In your example, your doctor g/f. The problem is not that her education was prejudicial, but that her education would giver her undue influence over the other jurors, due to their tendency to defer to experts. That said, I definitely respect - as a prosecutor - the role that juries play in keeping the criminal codes reasonable and understandable, and as a defense "box"* against excessive state power (jury nullification does happen!). I do not think it should be abolished. Defendants who want a more professional fact-finder can try their case to the judge. The state, of course, should be bound to whatever the defendant chooses. * Referring to the colloquialism: "You have four boxes. Use them in the proper order: (1) Soap (2) Ballot (3) Jury (4) Ammunition."
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The story was all over newsnet and we had exactly the same debate then.
Ian
In theory you are right, but invariably one side gets a say before the others, and that can influence an all-too naive public.
But in the courtroom, doesn't one side go before the other? Is the side to go first more likely to win?
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
No, because the jurors get that information in the context of the court, and critically analyse it. It's the external info that they don't know where they got it that's bad.
Also, courtrooms have "objection; sustained" when someone talks bullshit, e.g. bending the truth to make a false point. That's bread and butter stuff for newpapers, go look at your local rags front page.
Example, here, last week "Joyriders race at 80mph down city street", front page headline. The source of the "80mph" figure? Second last paragraph of a whole page article: "An anonymous resident said it seemed as though the cars were driving up to 80 mph". That's enough "proof" to make front page? Or is it the fact it sold more copy that day?
But it really doesn't matter. The Liberals didn't deliver on either.
But that doesn't have anything to do with justice in the courtroom. Obviously you didn't fall for it, and it only takes one juror to straighten things out for the other eleven during juror deliberations.
With bad jurors there's no justice - period - and it doesn't matter what the newspapers say.
Regardless, going back to the story, these are facts that are being presented in court that are subject to a media blackout. Not the other way around.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
I have been wondering for a long time now. What article was that in? Thank you.
I think you're a bit confused. Temporary censorship is indeed censorship. Otherwise there would be almost no censorship as nearly everything comes out at some point. What I think you are arguing is whether temporary censorship is good or bad. Which is a perfectly debatable subject.
Slashdot tends to have a 'hive mind' that hears the word censorship and thinks "bad" immediately. But as in some cases like this, that isn't always black and white.
I strongly agree with the statement that an individual has the right to a proper and fair trial. But I'm not so sure that an ignorant public is necessarilly an unbiased one. And if that ignorance is a danger to the public, then it becomes even more important that the public not be ignorant.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
So if there was a publication ban in the US preventing TV stations from showing OJ in his Bronco driving down the freeway at slow speed with OJ pointing a gun to his head - that OJ would then have been convicted in the criminal trial?
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
I didn't fall for it because I have an inherent mistrust for the media, something that made the quote I posted above seem all the more relevant for me when I first read it. Most people don't have this mistrust and they take all that they read/watch as fact. I've learned to be critical of everything I am told.
I think we are mostly agreeing here, however I do think you are underestimating the power of subcoucious association. Even being aware of your own bias doesn't stop it from being present. As critical as I can be on many issues, there are ones I won't mentally critise because I want to agree with them. I am not aware of this happening, but I know it does. This is how the mind works. It's like "proving" religion to those who are religious, basically that's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Uh, let's try doing a little substitution on that:
End-user license agreements (EULAs), on the other hand, are very simple. The entire text of the MS XP EULA, comprising all relevant restrictions on use and copying is only 289 pages long. That's the entire contract, everything.
That's very easy to understand in relative terms.
I'm sorry - what exactly is in it that takes so much space to write? I could summarize copyright in a paragraph or two...
Why is it that America thinks that they are the only country in the world and everyone should follow their laws?????
This is bullshit. It shows complete disregard for Canadian law and respect of values.
It is a typical American attitude that everyone else should follow their mentality. If someone doesn't like it, get ready to get invaded.
Ever wonder why when most American are traveling overseas with Canadian patches on luggage/jackets. It because the rest of the world has a great respect for Canada. Which is completely the opposite for Americans (not respected, and regarded as arrogant).
The publication ban was put in place for a man to get a fair trial. Believe me when I say that this all going to come out in the wash and the liberal government will pay for this.
This comment is bang on. Publication bans on information pending jury based trials are as old as the modern media, and have served our justice system well.
I'd love to see the Liberal party duly punished based on the results of the inquiry, provided that the charges prove accurate, but on the conditions that it's not premature nor unfare. At no point has there been any doubt in my mind that, at it's conclusion, the inquiry would be thourough and informative. There's absolutely no benefit to the Canadian public of an early leak of this testimony in advance of Brault's trial. The testimony was never intended to be perminantly suppressed. The proper assumption at this stage is that the publication ban would have been lifted in due time.
This is in my eyes merely an attempt by an extreme right winger (by Canadian standards) from a foreign nation to influence Canadian politics and use sensationalism to try to skew the opinions and perhaps future votes of Canadian citizens. This is not how we do things in Canada, and the idea of right wing americans (who I'd never accuse of being advocates of free speech unless it invovled slandering an opposing politcal force) trying to report to the Canadian public makes me sick to my stomach... even as a conservative myself. I think the majority of Canadians would have been happy to let the proceedings finish before passing judgement. In Canada, presumably unlike the united states based on the actions of the blogger, people would not have been fooled by a Liberal call of an early election and instead it would easily backfire and have the people presume them guilty in that situation.
See this for what it is: an extreme right wing member of the american amateur media trying to (a) make a name for himself and (b) slander a left wing Canadian party. Whether or not the Liberal party is guilty is moot as it relates to this breech of the publication ban, and is a matter best left to the Canadian courts and the Canadian public to decide.
----- sXe
I think that, should you be exposed to something in that paper, if you were on a trial jury you would be able to ignore what you read in the papers. I really find it hard to believe that people would put more weight in a paper (even if they trust it) than the defense or prosecution.
I've seen the sentiment expressed before. It's like name-that-tune: "I could rewrite the law in one page!" To put it bluntly, no, you couldn't, not in a way that would be useful. If you tried, the results would be like the Ten Commandments: succinct, elegant, endlessly debated and utterly unenforceable.
"but that her education would giver her undue influence over the other jurors, due to their tendency to defer to experts."
Errr...but thats why they are experts -- because you expect someone to defer to them. You don't ask the garbageman to make decisions about the lump growing on the side of your neck, nor would I ask a doctor about IT related questions. Its just like my attorney sends me notes asking about certain psychology and IT related questions (I have formal education in both...which leads to other problems). He isn't an expert.
But as you say, the jury system will be as competent as the citizenry will allow it -- and that there is the problem. As I mentioned, citizens are not all equal and they tend to favor those in a situation like their own. Why are poor minorities not favored to sit on drug cases by prosecutors? Because they 'understand' why someone might sell drugs. Who has the time to sit on juries? People that have nothing else to do -- the poor and uneducated.
I'm sorry, but I don't want those people judging me nor do I want them judging others.
I admire the fact that you are a prosecutor -- its hard work and its not paid well. As someone that works for the public, I can understand why you'd do it. But all in all, the jury system needs to be torn down to the ground and built back from scratch if it is to be effective.
First off, I take offence to those who see Canada as a country that is full of corruption. I teach English here in Berlin and try and bring discussion topics to class which can cause some kind of discussion (ok, for my more advanced students who already speak quite good English) and I brought this topic up in class a few weeks ago the week that Chrétien gave his testimony. The general consensus was that this scandal isn't really that huge. As usual, I searched for a web page which ranked countries by corruption, and I found this http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html At the end of 2004, long after Sheila Fraser released her report and the inquiry started (it's actually mentioned in their "Country Report" somewhere) and lo-and-behold, Canada is ranked 12th, above such notables as Germany, France and the USA. In reality, perception hasn't really changed that much in Canada about what went on, but we just want the details.
Which comes to my next point: details. What the Gomery Inquiry will get is a lot of testimony from a lot of different people. As has been noted above, once a person is called to testify, they can't refuse, and they can't "take the 5th" as we have no such thing. There is no such thing as someone getting up in front of the stand and saying that they won't testify, it simply isn't allowed. In other words, we end up getting information from everyone (although sometimes it's useless) and a better picture of the truth comes out.
But there is a trade-off. In Canada, we believe the rights of the individual is more important that the rights of the whole in many ways (in other ways not), and one of those ways is the right to a fair trial. The concept is that when you have a jury, you want to have the best people on the jury, so they will have the intelligence to make a good decision based on the facts. The problem is, those people are usually also the best informed outside of courthouse, which means reading newspapers, watching the news, etc.
Now, I've seen arguments on here that suggest that an intelligent person won't be swayed by the news in the end, but we've seen in history, especially in the 20th C. and more recently in the 21st C. that well educated countries are completely sucked in by socialization and slanted news coverage. Owe, and if you think the media doesn't slant things these days, here is a little article posted last year about Fox News http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,123 9094,00.html The most telling sentence from it is "Fox News could justifiably claim to have achieved a level of accuracy and impartiality that was appropriate to its audience in the US, where different rules apply."
Next, to those who think there will be a snap election called because of this don't really understand Canadian politics at the moment. Those who have saying that there might be a snap election are those who have the most to gain by creating a bit more FUD in Canada's political system - the opposition. There is no way, the the governing party would try and call an election right now. Any party worthy of being in Parliament (and I even include the NDP in this) would hammer them so hard and so fast on trying to cover up the testimony that the current leader wouldn't have a chance.
Talking about the current leader, although he was a member of cabinet during the years in question, there has been no linkage between him and the scandal. As far as I've read, there has been attempts, but not one witness so far has come out and said he was involved. He was the that set up the commission in the fist place and has to live with its results (most previous PM's might not have done that - for those who don't know, he had a majority government at the time and could ha
Take note, take note, O world,
To be direct and honest is not safe.
Score one for actual common sense (and, by extension, free speech): The ban has been lifted in the face of extensive blogging and otherwise above-the-law publication breaches.
-- There are two kinds of motorcycles. 1: German. 2: Crap.