Saturday, October 16, 2010


LOCAL EVENTS WINNIPEG:
PROTEST HONORARY DEGREE TO VIC TOEWS:
As Molly has mentioned before tomorrow there will be a ceremony to present federal Justice Minister Vic Toews with a (dis ?)honorary degree at the University of Winnipeg. It's a strange case of "honour" as one can question the basis for it in terms of service to the community. Has VT saved even one medical patient from a deadly disease ? Has he given even one person hope via raising them from poverty ? Has he established even one innovative social program that has done any good whatsoever ? I don't mean building more prisons. Has he contributed anything whatsoever to the literary or artistic legacy of this country at least once ? Has he even been entertaining and told at least one original funny joke in his life ? In other words has he ever done anything whatsoever to make anyone's life better at any time in the past present or future ? Or has he been a good and crafty political timeserver and held enough offices for enough years to coast into a bizarre "port of honour". What on Earth does "honour" mean in this case ?


Some will be opposing the granting of this 'honorarily' degree. Here's the notice of the protest.
WWWWWWWWWW
Vic Toews Honorary Degree Protest
Time Sunday, October 17 · 12:00pm - 2:00pm

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Location University of Winnipeg, Bulman Centre basement
515 Portage Ave
Winnipeg, MB

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More Info

Join the Coalition for Integrity in Academic Accolades on Sunday, October 17th at 12:00 noon in the Riddell Hall Cafeteria (U of W) for a protest of the University of Winnipeg's decision to grant Vic Toews an Honorary Doctorate of Laws. We will be meeting in the cafeteria to coordinate before moving outdoors to the protest... location which will remain undisclosed until Sunday. All who attend the protest are asked to be respectful towards those attending the convocation ceremony.

The sins of Toews are too numerous to list, but here are a few lowlights:
-Vic Toews believes that a bill adding queer Canadians to a list of groups protected by hate propaganda legislation is "a dangerous bill that will toss fundamental Canadian freedoms out the window.”
-Vic Toews has suggested lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 and is not opposed to putting 10-year-olds in jail.
-Vic Toews spoke in favour of re-criminalizing abortions at the National Pro-Life Conference that was held in Winnipeg in 2004.
-Vic Toews has compared legalizing same-sex marriage to the “government celebrating a Black Mass.” ( Molly Note- In which case it should be right up the Harperite alley. The federal Conservatives seem pretty Satanic to me )

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This guy is pretty creepy. Is there any truth to the rumour that Mr. 'family values' knocked up one of his staff which promoted his own divorce?

mollymew said...

Yes, apparently it is true if one can trust the local paper the Winnipeg Free Press http://winnipegfreepress.com which roiled in the matter two years ago when Toews was in line to be pensioned off to a judicial appointment. Quite funny as Toews is on record as saying that judges have a pretty easy workload. Even funnier considering how this could have come about given the fact that Toews has a criminal record for overspending one of his campaigns. He pleaded guilty.
I think that this is an indictable offense, but I might be wrong. The interesting thing would be how they could have justified appointing him to the bench given the fact that he has been convicted.
The pregnant woman in question was actually the aide of another Conservative MP which I'm sure went over like a lead balloon in the caucus.
What I am most grateful for and that for which I kiss the ground you walk upon is that you pointed out Toews' little dalliance to me. It's the meat of another article given the fact that I was unaware of it until I checked. There is a REASON that I was unaware as I usually do at least a Wikipedia scan on the politicians I write about.
This was the case for Toews, and the wikipedia article had the info about his criminal conviction but NOTHING about his child out of wedlock and his divorce.This hardly matters as I am immensely unconcerned with his personal life. Check, however, the wikipedia article and THEN check the cached version where it IS mentioned.
Somebody (who, who, who ?) rewrote the wikipedia article so as to eliminate reference to Toews' divorce and the scandal behind it, but they were not swift enough to eliminate the previous version from the cache. Ooops ! Great stuff.

mollymew said...

Sigh; it's too bad. The Wikipedia version that I referred to was edited in On October 15th abnd edited out again on October 18. The version under 'Future Plans' that is no longer visible did indeed mention Toews' divorce, but it was in the context of comments that were hardly objective and should have obviously been framed differently. The editor who took them out shows no evidence of being a Conservative Party hack. Damn it. I thought I had caught the Conservatives in the act of altering Wikipedia. No such thing I'm afraid.