Nov. 9, 2021 

UBI Works –

Former Governor of the Bank of Canada on Guaranteed Basic Income:

Stephen Poloz calls the CERB “an amazing feat” and views the CERB method as one that would save all the inefficiencies of the present system of having to apply and manage all sorts of provincial and federal programs in order to make more equal income and as a correction to poverty and the social safety net.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4QncNxF0ts   (Other UBI commentary also on YouTube at the initial link.)   Related article: CBC News – Peter Zimonjic   Almost 90,000 seniors facing guaranteed income supplement cut for accepting pandemic benefits – Parliamentary Budget Officer says scrapping clawback of GIS would cost $438 million   https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-cra-gis-payment-clawback-1.6237311  Related article: CTV News – Jordan Gowling  Bank of Canada Governor says inflation ‘transitory but not short-lived’  https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/bank-of-canada-governor-says-inflation-transitory-but-not-short-lived-1.5655043   Related article: Toronto Star – Raisa Patel   Justin Trudeau’s Liberals start the clock on a deal to compensate First Nations children and their families  https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/11/04/justin-trudeaus-liberals-start-the-clock-on-a-deal-to-compensate-first-nations-children-and-their-families.html  Related article: Toronto Star – Sara Mojtehedzadeh   Cold, hard and vicious’: This is life on Ontario’s minimum wage — and what the evidence reveals about its impact https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/11/06/cold-hard-and-vicious-this-is-life-on-ontarios-minimum-wage-and-what-the-evidence-reveals-about-its-impact.html

 Tweet from Christiane Sadeler:

I am seeing more and more police services avoiding the issues and retorting to old narratives about what keeps us safe. I say: Safety is bigger than absence of crime. Safety is being housed, fed, equitably treated and more.  (https://twitter.com/ChrisSadeler/status/1399564143317815300?s=03 )

Lawyer’s Daily – John Howard Society, Murray Fallis

Criminal justice wish list

Here’s dreaming for justice reform!  Fallis is a lawyer with JHS and offers four wishes for the new people at Justice.  First, Correctional Services Canada to notify appropriate charities when people are release.  Second, provide provincial health cards on release.  Third, clear up the security backlog on volunteers working with newly released prisoners.  Fourth, ensure that the structured intervention units (read solitary) comply with both international and domestic requirements.  Not a lot but yet so much at the heart of rehab.  What now Minister Mendicino?  https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/criminal/articles/31157

CBC News – Catherine Tunney

RCMP unlikely to meet deadline to equip Mounties with body-worn cameras – The force had planned to start rolling out cameras by late 2021 but still hasn’t awarded a contract

With target for the end of 2021m the RCMP has yet to issue a contract for the supply of sufficient body-worn cameras to equip the force’s members.  In fact, even the vendor has not yet been selected.  Originally the intention was to equip small town and rural detachments.  The project will cost $131 million over five years to supply the cameras and technology to all 15,000 active constables.  Critiques decry the lack of evidence that the cameras improve policing or accountability.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-body-worn-1.6236705  Related article:  Globe and Mail – Josh O’Kane   RCMP wants to use AI to learn passwords in investigations, but experts warn of privacy risks  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-rcmps-plan-to-use-ai-to-learn-passwords-in-investigations-has-privacy/

CTV News –  Alexandra Mae Jones and Heather Wright

Hand signal used by missing teen developed in Canada to address pandemic violence

A simple hand signal from a kidnapped women in a car in Kentucky is credited with saving the girl’s life when people in a following car noticed the repeated signal for help, popularized by Tik-Tok but originating with the Canadian Women’s Foundation.  https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/hand-signal-used-by-missing-teen-developed-in-canada-to-address-pandemic-violence-1.5657826   At the same site:  Related article: CTV News – Explaining the signal for help.  Related article: CBC News –  Mark Gollom, Ellen Mauro How a made-in-Canada distress signal may have helped save the life of a North Carolina teen –  Girl, 16, is believed to have learned gesture from social media platform TikTok  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-distress-signal-teen-north-carolina-kentucky-1.6241242

  The Guardian (UK) –

‘Weed out’ police misogyny and racism with phone checks, says UK watchdog – Sir Tom Winsor says random searches of officers’ WhatsApp and social media could act as deterrent

UK police have had a constable charged around the stalking and murder of a young lady.  The proposal is part of looking to see how police may be discovered to be engaged in criminal misconduct.  Random searches of cell phones and social media may help or simply drive the offensive activity underground.  But it is a serious proposition from Tom Winsor, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, in the face of two constables who have taken and posted offensive photos.  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/06/weed-out-police-misogyny-and-racism-with-phone-checks-says-uk-watchdog

Toronto Star – Romeo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman

‘We were taught to kill.’ This Nov. 11, remember child soldiers, and the harms their recruitment causes to all sides

This reminder from Canadian retired General Romeo Dallaire about how low human oppression can sink: he reviews the efforts of the Dallaire Institute to end the practice of forced conscription of children into military and rebel armies.  “One of the most grave violations of human rights faced by our troops on deployment is the recruitment and use of children as soldiers. Interactions with children engaged in violence can create deep moral, as well as physical, injuries on all sides… As Canadians mark Remembrance Day this Thursday, we ask that, as we honour fallen soldiers, we also recognize the full spectrum of modern conflict, to better appreciate its traumatic effects on all whose lives are touched by war.” https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/11/07/we-were-taught-to-kill-this-nov-11-remember-child-soldiers-and-the-harms-their-recruitment-causes-to-all-sides.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a01&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=404CAADEF7EB839FC77B1B04F0C251E1&utm_campaign=top_84894

 Harvard University Political Review (US) – Shira Hoffer

Criminals Are Human, Too: An Argument for Reform

The title to this article is a theoretical challenge to those who would see the article in yesterday’s newsletter on make-up for women in prison as fluff.  The notion that prisoners are human too is, says Hoffer, radical in the US.  “If it weren’t a radical idea, how would we justify the inhumane and degrading conditions of prisons and jails, the disregard with which we speak to the accused, or the post-release disenfranchisement of convicted felons? I am not here to argue for anarchy, but I am here to argue for humanity, and this is why I have chosen to write this column on criminal justice reform.” https://harvardpolitics.com/criminals-are-human/  (First of a new series)