Give the provinces $2 billion.
???
Profit:
Officials in Ottawa have few clues as to how well the cash was spent by most provinces since 2004. Provincial reports are months or even years overdue - when they're provided at all.
It's a blind spot that critics loudly warned about when past Liberal governments first started funding a national child-care system that was seen by many as encroaching on provincial social-policy turf.
....
A chart compiled by the association says reports for 2004-05 have still not been filed by Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Alberta, the Yukon or Nunavut.
The federal government's own child-care reports are missing for 2004-05 and 2005-06 "for a number of reasons," said Glennie Graham, director of child and youth policy for Human Resources.
....
Just five of 10 provinces reported on federal cash for the fiscal year 2004-05, and only Saskatchewan and British Columbia have filed for 2005-06, Lysack says.
Nonetheless, another $950 million was transferred from Ottawa to provincial and territorial governments in the last fiscal year. Senior officials with the federal Human Resources Department confirmed the missing data.
With this deal, the provinces get the best of all worlds. They take the money, don't tell the feds where it's gone because it's a provincial matter, then hold out their hands for more.
For all we know, it went to beer and popcorn.
Yet another reason for the feds to stop buying their way into provincial jurisdiction.
3 comments:
Popcorn and beer; or in the case of Ontario, to Dalton's slush fund?
This is why universal childcare as promised and proposed by the Liberals is such a shame. Childcare comes under provincial jurisdiction. The Feds can't force the provinces to use the money any particular way and both levels of government know this going in.
Unfortunately, rather than make that clear in the last election, Harper and the Conservatives pretended to (somewhat) share the goal.
If the Federal government would just be honest about this, it would become a provincial election issue (or not) as it should be.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Behind Bars, Before The Bar
Believe it or not, even the Bar has some standards for joining it. Something about not bringing the profession into disrepute.
Stop snickering.
Even the Quebec Bar didn't want this guy, but may be forced to take him:
He left the country after being repeatedly denied enrolment in the Quebec bar admission course because he stabbed his mother to death when he was younger. But Sébastien Brousseau has finally prevailed in his decade-long campaign for the right to become a lawyer.
The Quebec bar says it will not appeal a decision this spring by a panel of judges who ruled that Mr. Brousseau is sufficiently rehabilitated that he can practise law without hurting the reputation of the legal profession.
....
Mr. Brousseau was 21 when he killed his mother, Micheline Sévigny, in their home near Montreal, stabbing her 40 times. According to psychiatric assessments cited in court documents, his parents had separated and he lived with his mother, often feuding with her.
The night of Nov. 16, 1990, according to his account to a psychiatrist, Mr. Brousseau got into an argument with his mother and she swung at him with a baseball bat.
He said he remembered defending himself with a kitchen knife but did not recall how often he stabbed her. He said that she was in agony when he came to his senses, so he slit her throat to end her suffering.
Despite the lurid details of the slaying, the ruling noted that the Crown changed the indictment against him from murder to manslaughter, on the advice of psychiatric experts.
After being paroled in 1992, Mr. Brousseau attended law school. By the time of his fourth attempt to register in the bar exam school in 2001, he had obtained a pardon.
A pardon may wipe away a criminal record and all of the usual consequences of having one, but it cannot undo a man's past.
The absence of a criminal record is neither sufficient nor necessary proof of good character, according to just about any Bar.
Had Brousseau's past offences been fraud or any other breach of trust, the Bar would never have given him a chance. Even if he had only faced civil judgments for same, and never any criminal indictments.
Had his crime been drunk driving, the Bar wouldn't have cared as long as he hadn't killed or maimed anyone.
In any event, his may be a hollow victory yet. The Bar can close ranks against anyone with a firmness and discipline even the Mob would envy. He may have to be admitted to bar school, but no firm is obligated to hire him for articles, without which he cannot be called.
And even if he should find and complete articles, he will still have to demonstrate that he is of good character, to the Bar's satisfaction, again.
And it will find any excuse to keep him out, now.
But even if, despite all this, he is admitted, no firm in Quebec will obligated to hire him, nor the Bar help him hang out his own shingle.
When the Bar wants you out, it will move heaven and earth to keep you out.
Source: Globe and Mail
Posted by Loyalist at 7:10 AM
67 comments:
Anonymous said...
Thanks. I will try to prove you wrong. By the way, I already did my exams and have a job.
Sebastien Brousseau.
7/11/2006 11:57 PM
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