Is Libby Davies the Most Irresponsible MP in Canada?

Davies resurrects Dhalla's pension bill

When running in a riding like Vancouver East, one can always bank on the appeal of additional welfare benefits for somebody.

In this vein, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies' most recent proposal is not actually a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike the idea's progenitor, Davies will likely not have to pay a price for the sheer irresponsibility of it.

Davies has resurrected a proposal by former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla to pay old age pension benefits to elderly immigrants immediately upon arriving in Canada. The proposal, adopted as a blatant means of pandering to the immigrant community in her riding of Brampton-Springdale, instead angered her constituents. She was beaten by 10,000 votes in the 2011 federal election by Conservative Parm Gill.

Running in Vancouver East, Davies has found that no bit of far-left boilerplate, no matter how ridiculous or irresponsible, can fail her.

Precisely how irresponsible is Davies' most recent proposal? It's irresponsible to the tune of anywhere from $300 million to $700 million per annum, paid out to people who have never contributed a red cent to the Canada Pension Plan. Every year.

The sheer irresponsibility of it becomes crystal clear when one considers that as of 2006, the CPP was considered to be facing an unfunded liability of $620 billion.

This isn't the first time Davies has done something irresponsible for purely ideological or demagogical purposes. In 2009, Davies voted against a bill to impose a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for human traffickers who exploit children. Her reason was an ideological opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing.

Davies' Parliamentary motion calling on the government to open pension funds to recent immigrants -- currently there is a 10-year residency requirement, which is as it should remain, if not increase -- is merely the most recent in a long, sad history of demagogical irresponsibility from Libby Davies.

This is What Libby Davies Does Not Take Seriously

African woman subjected to "slave-like" conditions

What a difference a little distance can make.

On one side of Vancouver, Mumtaz Ladha is wanted for human trafficking.

According to Vancouver police, she subjected a young African woman to "slave-like" conditions in her home. She promised the woman a work visa and a job in a hair salon. Instead, she delivered slavery.

“This was work well beyond what you would expect reasonable working conditions to be in Canada,” explained Constable Michael McLaughlin, RCMP E division spokesperson. “Things like hand-washing underwear of all the people in the house, hand-washing cars, hand-washing the cars of guests who came over."

“She wasn’t given enough food," McLaughlin continued. "In some cases, she was forced to eat whatever was left over from a meal — table scraps, in other words. She had no money, her identity documents weren’t with her, and it’s our information that she was often only allowed to sleep when the other people in the home were all sleeping.”

It took a year for the victim to seek help. She was brought to Canada in 2008, and sought refuge in a Vancouver women's shelter in 2009.

“I can’t talk about the exact circumstances, but ultimately, she finally understood through having a conversation with somebody that the conditions she was living under were not acceptable,” McLaughlin continued. “She had so little idea, you would be shocked. She was very depressed, she was very upset, she thought she was stuck, she thought there would be no way out of this situation.”

According to McLaughlin, part of the problem that helps facilitate human trafficking lies in the lack of information available to the victims.

“Part of the reason why human trafficking can exist, even in a country like this, is when people are brought over here, they don’t realize that the standards in Canada are so much different from the area of the world where they’re from,” McLaughlin explained. “They don’t realize it’s not okay to be living in a place without your identity papers, without pay, working these kinds of hours. They don’t understand the social mores of what goes on here.”

Of course, there's one other problem: that police don't yet have all the necessary tools to combat human trafficking. And there are some MPs in Parliament who simply aren't happening.

Taking centre stage in this regard is an MP from the East side of Vancouver: Vancouver-East MP Libby Davies. In 2009, she voted against anti-human trafficking legislation.

Davies did this not only out of ideological opposition to mandatory minimum sentences -- the bill mandated a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for the trafficking of children -- but, according to UBC Professor Benjamin Perrin, out of an equally-ideological pro-prostitution agenda.

When one considers the treatment inflicted on Mumtaz Ladha's victim, it's astonishing to think that enslaving someone -- in a country where slavery is not only illegal, but antithetical to Canadian values -- would not warrant a sentence of at least five years. (In fact, the mandatory minimum sentence should be life in prison without parole.)

Canadians who take the issue of human trafficking seriously understand one central fact: that people who traffick in human beings simply belong in prison. End of conversation.

That Libby Davies can sit on her blatantly-ideological positions in East Vancouver while individuals living in multi-million dollar homes in West Vancouver enslave people is an utter outrage.

The Unfortuante Ugly Side of the Jack Layton Massage Parlour Story...

...is the unfortunate ugly side of his party

Yesterday, during the closing days of the 2011 Election campaign, a story broke chronicling how NDP leader Jack Layton was caught -- naked -- in a Toronto massage parlour that was suspected of being a bawdy house.

Reportedly, police were in the parlour investigating reports that underage Asian girls were performing sex acts there.

For his own part, Layton says that he didn't know anything untoward was happening in the massage parlour in question. Frankly, there's very little reason to doubt him.

"I went for a massage at a community clinic," Layton explained. "The police advised it wasn't the greatest place to be, so I left and I never went back."

Layton's wife, Olivia Chow, hasn't been taken by even the slightest bit of surprise at the news.

"I knew about this appointment, as I always do. No one was more surprised than my husband when the police informed him of allegations of potential wrong doing at this establishment," she declared. "He told me about the incident after it happened. Any insinuation of wrongdoing on the part of my husband is completely and utterly false."

As it pertains to this story, there's really only two: one, that the media knew about this story for quite a while and refused to report it; the other is that it serves to direct attention toward the soft, ugly underbelly of the NDP.

As these matters so often do, it has to do with Vancouver-East MP Libby Davies.

In 2009, Davies voted against a bill that would have strengthened Canada's laws on human trafficking.

Davies did so out of her ideological opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing, apparently not understanding that human traffickers simply belong in prison. Full stop, and end of conversation.

For his own part, Layton voted in favour of that very bill. He understands this issue, and made the right decision.

Yet that he counts Libby Davies among the deputy leaders of his party leaves the NDP with questions to answer about this issue.

Frankly, when underage Asian girls turn up at bawdy houses in Canada, they're there because they're victims of human trafficking.

When Jack Layton is found in such an establishment, here's there because he doesn't really know what's going on there. That's not really his fault. Yet Libby Davies voted against making it easier to shut such establishments down. That is her fault, and Layton must call on her to answer for it.

It's too late to remove Libby Davies as the NDP candidate in Vancouver-East -- which, frankly, would be the right decision. Anyone who would vote against human trafficking legislation is not worthy to sit in Parliament. Keeping her as an NDP candidate is simply grossly irresponsible.

But, at the very least, Jack Layton can demote her promptly on May 2 -- something that should have been done two years ago.

Jack Layton For Leader of the Opposition

...lined up against a Harper majority

Ever since Prime Minister Stephen Harper led the Conservative Party to power in 2006, one word has been considered scandalous if so much as uttered by a Conservative:

Majority.

This has, of course, been driven as much by Liberal panic-mongering as anything else. But now, with the 2011 federal election steadily slipping away from the Liberals, they're working as hard as they can to make a certain word scandalous if so much as uttered by the NDP:

Leader. As in, "of the Opposition".

Following what appeared to be stagnating numbers early in the campaign, the NDP surge -- particularly in Quebec -- has had tongues wagging across Canada.

Michael Ignatieff, for one, is not happy about it.

"Come on, folks, let's be serious," Ignatieff implored. "We've got to choose a government on the 2nd of May; we can't choose a bunch of Boy Scouts on this issue."

Which is actually rather ironic when you think about it: Ignatieff and his fellow opposition leaders essentially told the Canadian public that they toppled the Harper government because they weren't Boy Scouts.

According to Ignatieff, what matters is that Canadians vote for the Liberals in order to avoid returning Stephen Harper to power.

"If you vote for Mr Layton, you're going to get a Harper minority government." Ignatieff forecasted. "If you vote for Mr Duceppe, you're going to get a Harper minority government."

Which, again, is funny when you think about it. To most people, Quebeckers shouldn't vote for the Bloc Quebecois because they're separatists. To Ignatieff, it's because not Quebeckers voting for the Bloc is good for him.

It's the kind of sentiment that gives ample cause for doubt about whether or not Ignatieff is fit to continue as Leader of the Opposition.

But while Ignatieff's stock is fading, another opposition leader continues to gather momentum in the leadership department. And, no, it isn't Gilles Duceppe.

That leader is Jack Layton. Speaking recently on the campaign trail, Layton indicated sound juggment on a matter of intense importance to Canadians: the Constitution.

Layton indicated that he would be open to re-opening the Constitution in order to secure Quebec's assent to that document. And as opposed to Pierre Trudeau, who rammed the Constitution through while a separatist government was in power in Quebec, Layton wants to wait until "the winning conditions for Canada in Quebec" exist.

Needless to say, Layton is gambling. Canadians don't exactly look back on the last rounds of Constitutional wranglings -- the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords -- with fond memories.

Yet Layton is clearly well-attuned to the problems the state of Canada's Constitution -- with Quebec not a signatory to that document -- pose to the country.

"What we're saying is that at some point in the future the whole issue of the fact that Quebec hasn't signed on to our Constitution has got to be dealt with," Layton remarked. "But the first step is getting rid of the Stephen Harper government and putting in place a government that can actually work with not only the people of Quebec, but right across the country, and stop this division that we've been getting for far too long."

Quebec isn't the only waning hole in the country's Constitutional unity. Canada's First Nations have yet to achieve a satisfactory position within the British North America Act.

But if Layton is going to be involved in Constitutional negotiations, it's imperative that those negotiations take place under a Conservative government. If Layton is able to direct such constitutional discussions from the driver's seat, God only knows what kind of disaster will ensue.

One could rest assured that Layton would do everything he can to institutionalize some rather extreme leftist principles in the Constitution. The idea of Libby Davies with a pen at the Constitutional table should send a chill down the spines of any thinking Canadian. (Read: not the kind who vote for Davies.)

All this being said, the Constitution is a key issue for Canada, whether Canadians welcome it or not. Jack Layton's understanding of this is another key marker demonstrating that he's ready to sit in the Opposition's big chair.

Jack Layton would make an excellent Leader of the Opposition... opposing a Stephen Harper majority government.

Somewhere, in East Vancouver, They're Cloning the Next Libby Davies

Charlie Smith heralds the arrival of Ben West

Somewhere in the offices of the Georgia Strait, Charlie Smith is looking for the next Libby Davies.

He seems to think that he's found her... or, in this case, him.

Smith is seemingly ready to annoint Ben West the heir apparent to the riding of Vancouver-East. West has built himself an accomplished (by Smith's standards) career as a political activist, having attached himself to seemingly every far-left political cause under the sun.

Right now, West is affiliated with the Wilderness Committee, a group dedicated to publicizing urban environmental issues.

Perusing Smith's loveletter to West, one question has clearly been ignored:

If Ben West is as impressive as Smith claims he is, why on Earth would he want to be the next Libby Davies?

Davies, after all, has consistently demonstrated that she is someone who simply just doesn't get it. She doesn't seem to get anything.

Whether it's voting against anti-human trafficking legislation out of her ideological opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing, or declaring Israel to be the longest occupation in history, Davies' dedication to various far-left dogmas has not given her the clairvoiance to help her party make desperately-needed inroads with centrist Canadians.

West, meanwhile, could potentially find such inroads. His accomplishment in making Metro Vancouver blink on its garbage incineration plans could potentially resonate well with NIMBY-thinking Canadians. It's certainly a legitimate concern.

There is one other reason West may not be the next Davies: he's currently affiliated with the Green Party, not the NDP.

Whatever Ben West may want to be, he should run screaming from Charlie Smith's efforts to annoint him as the next Libby Davies. Whatever West may end up being, he certainly deserves better than that.

A Libby-Sized Bump in the Coalition Road

NDP House leader questions Israel's right to exist

Regardless of however the Liberal Party and NDP want to play it, talk of a Liberal/NDP coalition is very much alive in Canada again.

If the Liberals were ever seriously considering such an option, a serious bump has just appeared in the road to such a coalition: notably, NDP House Leader Libby Davies and her stance on Israel.

Davies was asked whether she believed that Israel's "occupation" of Palestine began in 1948 or 1967.

"I'm not going to argue numbers, it's too long," Davies replied. "This is the longest occupation in the world. People are suffering."

Which would be a surprise to, say, the Kurds. In the 16th century, Kurdistan was divided between the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. Today, historical Kurdistan is split up amongst Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.

NDP Leader Jack Layton and Deputy Leader Thomas Mulcair have both attempted to distance themselves from Davies' remarks. But their potential coalition partners -- the Liberal Party -- are having none of it.

Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae has called for Davies' resignation as Deputy Leader of the NDP.

"These are not the off-the-cuff ramblings of any ill-informed or biased person," Rae fumed. "Ms Davies is the deputy leader of a political party that aspires to reflect and represent the views of Canada on the international stage. In this role, fully cognizant of her responsibilities, she stated that Israel has been occupying territories since 1948, the year of its independence. The logical implication of these comments is that Israel has no right to exist."

"This is a position that is more than just 'unacceptable,'" Rae continued. "This rhetoric is responsible for more than 'confusion,' and an 'inadvertent error,' as Ms Davies now suggests. The appropriate decision, given her stature and responsibilities with the NDP, is for Mr Layton to ask for her resignation as deputy leader and for Ms Davies to issue an apology to all Canadians. Nothing short of that will do."

Her stance on Israel isn't the only position of Davies that is unacceptable. Her stance on human trafficking is also an atrocity, and a humiliation of her party and constituents.

It's unlikely that coalition or merget talks between the Liberals and NDP will progress very far with the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party calling for the resignation of a deputy leader of the NDP.

Particularly when the best that Bob Rae could offer such a coalition is a tie with the Conservative Party.

Then again, considering that this coalition would need to mortgage the Canadian government to separatists, Canadians should be rather thankful for that.




Other bloggers writing about this topic:

"Gay and Right - Stephen Harper on Libby Davies"

Marginalized Action Dinosaur - "Someone Send Libby Davies a History Book! The Longest Occupation Ever?"

Let's Talk About "Serious", Shall We?

Bill Siksay clearly not serious about human trafficking -- or crime

Weeks after Conservative MP Joy Smith's private members' bill setting a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for child trafficking was passed by the House of Commons, at least one of the MPs who voted against it is still making excuses.

NDP MP Bill Siksay -- who, along with Libby Davies, was one of the only non-Bloc Quebecois MPs to vote against it -- insists that the government isn't being serious about child trafficking.

But Siksay is defending his actions based on the same limited ideology on criminal justice: the insistence that criminal law exists only to prevent crime and rehabilitate convicted offenders.

“I voted against it because I don’t believe this bill will do anything to prevent the crime, to stop human trafficking or to assist the victims of the crime,” Siksay insisted. “Mandatory minimum sentences have been proven to be utterly ineffective as a crime prevention tool and there’s just absolutely no evidence that they do anything to make the situation better.”

But Siksay is missing the mark. Locking human traffickers away does help protect their victims. Benjamin Perrin notes that "In order to come forward, the victim needs to know they are safe."

Or at least, needs to believe that they will be safe. Keeping their assailant behind bars would go a long way toward creating that sense of safety.

There is one valid point that Siksay does raise: the handling of victims by officials often provides a distinct disincentive for them to come forward.

“Victims are often deported from Canada if they’re discovered and often that puts them right back in the hands of the traffickers who sent them here in the first place,” Siksay explained.

This is a good point. But it's no excuse for Siksay to not support Smith's bill.

For example, Siksay could have offered his own private member's bill devoting more funding to the investigation and pursuit of human trafficking rings. He could have tabled a private member's bill that would automatically extent refugee status to people brought to Canada against their will by human traffickers.

Nothing about Joy Smith's bill would permanently close the books on the topic of human trafficking.

Even then, it's odd that individuals like Siksay simply can't grasp the notion that people who traffick in other human beings -- especially children -- belong in prison for the protection of those who would be their victims if they were allowed free.

Bill Siksay doesn't get it. He just. Doesn't. Get it. And he most certainly is not serious about the topic of human trafficking, or about crime.

If he were, he would have discarded his ideological views on crime and supported Joy Smith's bill.

They Perpetually Just Do Not Get It, Redux

Libby Davies votes against anti-child trafficking bill

A few days ago, in a blog post published on the National Post's Full Comment blog, Jeff Jedras demonstrated one of the weaknesses of Canada's ideological left: the inability to get it right on the topic of crime.

NDP MP Libby Davies recently underscored this troubled ideological attitude toward crime when she voted against an anti-child trafficking bill.

The bill, introduced by Conservative MP Joy Smith, is one of the rare bills to achieve quick passage through the House of Commons and is expected to quickly pass through the Senate as well.

The bill will institute five year mandatory minimum sentences for child trafficking, with tougher sentences if the child is killed, kidnapped, or sexually abused.

By the estimation of anyone who understands what human trafficking entails -- which is only more disgusting when it involves children -- one also understands that five years is actually an extremely lax sentence for such an act. In fact, the mandatory minimum sentence is not nearly hard enough (for this particular offence, the mandatory minimum sentence should be life in prison).

The problem of human trafficking is particularly troubling in Vancouver's downtown east side -- the riding that Davies represents.

"Whenever I give public presentations across the country, I bring up the Downtown Eastside," explains UBC Law professor Benjamin Perrin, who helped draft the bill. "It's the end of the line for people who have been exploited. Trafficking victims are found there under the control of hard narcotics. Why is the elected official of a riding in this horrible state of sexual exploitation unwilling to take a stand against the traffickers of children?"

The answer, as it turns out, is pure ideology.

"This is another ad hoc approach by the Conservatives to appear tough on crime when there is no evidence to show mandatory minimums have any effect on deterring human trafficking," Davies insists.

Once again, Davies has missed the mark incredibly in the name of an ideology that believes the only role of criminal law is to deter crime and rehabilitate offenders.

Once again, Davies has forgotten two key principles of the law: punishment and protection.

In fact, Smith's bill is important not only for the protection of those who would be victimized by human traffickers if allowed free again, but for the protection of those they've already victimized.

"In order to come forward, the victim needs to know they are safe," Perrin explains.

Not to mention the fact that there really are few punishments befitting the vile act of human trafficking. A proper-thinking country would maintain the death penalty for dealing with criminals who are this immoral and this dangerous. Moreover, human trafficking would be one of the few instances in which it would actually be used.

One can imagine that Libby Davies -- who is currently involved in a challenge to Canada's laws on prostitution and has seemingly never found a far-left cause she isn't eager to front -- would bellow to high heaven if such an act were ever contemplated by government.

Libby Davies, Jeff Jedras, the Bloc Quebecois and the other two other NDP MPs seem to share one common affliction:

The inability to separate the issue of crime and justice from ideology. It's one of the key afflications that prevents Canadians from taking them too seriously.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Jamie Lee Hamilton - "Rabid Reporter Hasiuk Again Takes Aim at Libby Davies"

Jack Layton: Agent of American Imperialism

Layton getting awfully cozy with oft-despised Americans

To adopt the old parlance from sports to politics, "everyone wants to be like Barack".

It doesn't have quite the same snap as "everyone wants to be like Mike", but when assessing the state of left-wing politics in at least North America today, it holds true.

Just like anyone who ever even touched a basketball wanted to emulate the then-best-known athlete in the world, anyone who's ever embraced progressive politics wants desperately to emulate the man who is currently the best-known politician in the world today.

Certainly, Jack Layton wants to be like Barack. One need look no further than the theme of the 2008 NDP campaign: change.

It certainly doesn't hurt that Jack Layton attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention, either. For a party all too often content to accuse their opponents of importing American policies and American values, it seems that Jack Layton is utterly unafraid to get good and cozy with the "empire" to the south -- particularly with a Presidential candidate whose rightward shift promises little global reprieve from the "imperialist" policies the NDP so often denounces as abhorrent.

Of course, this particular paradox is nothing new for the NDP. Consider commentary offered by journalist Ian King about NDP House leader Libby Davies.

The episode in question involves Davies taking CBC veteran reporter Terry Milewski to Seattle to attend some anti-war protests there. Afterward, Davies brought anti-war protester Ann Wright back across the border.

As King notes, "There is nothing Canadian about the wholesale importation of the American “anti-war” movement, with all its attached hangups over Vietnam and line-by-line reuse of symbols and slogans from the time."

Add that to the fact that the anti-war movement in the United States -- preoccupied first and foremost with the Iraq conflict -- are ill-suited to address the state of affairs in Canada in regards to the Afghanistan conflict, which has been sanctioned by the United Nations, putting the lie to insistence that the war is "illegal", as opposed to the Iraq war which enjoys no such sanction and so arguably is illegal.

Not to mention that the Vietnam-era rhetoric being employed by Iraqi war resisters in Canada is also ill-suited to their obligation to participate in a war they volunteered to fight in (for good or ill).

Likewise, there is nothing Canadian about the wholesale importation of Obama-esque rhetoric into Canada, no matter how much the NDP wants to, or the Liberal party wishes they could.

Certainly, there's nothing un-Canadian about looking to political movements in other countries for inspiration, but therein lies the rub.

If it isn't un-Canadian for Jack Layton and the New Democrats (as Layton emphasizes it) to look south of the border for inspiration, then it isn't un-Canadian for the Conservative party to do likewise.

While the current state of affairs in the United States should serve as a cautionary tale to the Conservative party to remain very careful about which inspirations to act on and which to reject, for the NDP or their partisans to accuse the Conservatives of being un-Canadian for doing so isn't only engaging in some inherently silly rhetoric, it's also being incredibly dishonest.

Of course Jack Layton isn't really an agent of American Imperialism. To insist so is just plain silly. But, like stupid, silly is as silly does.

If Jack Layton wants to continue indulging himself in silly rhetoric that panders to cross-border partisan parochialism, he may want to remember this:

He could always reap that particular whirlwind.