The Trump Executive Order Renaming Lake Ontario Is Illegal

Trump has claimed that he can rename Lake Ontario unilaterally with an Executive Order. Google Maps is obeying it. But, of course, like so many of his other Executive Orders, this one is illegal because it contradicts a binding treaty with Canada.

Civil Jury Trials In Common Law Countries Outside The U.S.

A report on civil jury trials in British Columbia provides some insight in the practice in Canada. (British Columbia and Colorado both have about 5 million people.) In that province, there are an average of 24 civil jury trials each year (1-3 of which are not motor vehicle accident cases in a typical year).

From the beginning of 2015/16 to the end of 2019/20 inclusive, jury notices were filed in 21,374 actions in British Columbia. In the same period covering five fiscal years, 120 civil jury trials were completed. 

In that time period 19,939 demands (93.3%) were made in motor vehicle accident cases, 1430 were made in general civil cases, 4 were made in family law cases, and 1 was made in a foreclosure case. About 80% of the demands were made in Vancouver or Westminster courts. 

In the ten year period ending on the same date, "238 civil jury trials took place between 2010/11 and 2019/20, representing approximately 30 per cent of all jury trials in the province. Undoubtedly the greatest number by far of civil jury filings and jury trials take place in Vancouver and New Westminster. Twelve Supreme Court registries in British Columbia had no civil jury trials whatsoever." A median B.C. civil jury trial takes nine days and the mean duration is ten days. There have been only two in the last ten years that took more than four weeks.

Québec abolished civil juries in 1976. In other provinces, jury trial is typically available at the option of a party in specific causes of action: defamation, malicious arrest, malicious prosecution, and false imprisonment. They are also available in actions for seduction, criminal conversation, and breach of promise of marriage in provinces that still permit those causes of action. Several provinces restrict jury trial in other civil matters to actions in which the amount in issue exceeds a specified value threshold.

The right to a jury trial is broader in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Alberta, and Ontario, although in Ontario the amount in controversy must exceed $200,000 Canadian dollars v. $75,000 in Alberta v. $1,000 in the other jurisdictions. 

In the England and Wales the civil jury trial right is narrow and this is also the case in New Zealand and some but not all Australian states and territories. There are no civil jury trials in South Australia or the Australian Capital Territory. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania have relatively broad civil jury trial rights.

By comparison, in Colorado, in 2006, there were 337 civil jury trials in a single year, which is typical, more than thirteen times as many per capita as British Columbia.

The situation in civil cases, which 15% of all jury trials are conducted, is more comparable between the federal and state system. There were just 17 limited jurisdiction civil trials in state court (v. 1236 bench trials and 3485 small claims bench trials) with jury trials making up just 1% of state court trials and where trials themselves are very rare. About 54% of civil trials in federal court (43 jury trials and 36 bench trials) and 50% civil trials in general jurisdiction state courts were to juries (277 jury trials and 280 bench trials), with about 75% in tort cases) - both of these categories of cases are more likely to go to trial but trials are still rare in civil cases across the board.

A large share of motor vehicle accident cases in Colorado are resolved in jury trials, but they make up a much smaller share of the total share of civil jury trials in the state (maybe half). 

Also, while Canada has federal trial courts, they make up a tiny share of the total case load of civil court dockets in Canada and an even smaller share of Canadian civil jury trials. The main federal court has 37 judges, 9 part-time senior judges, and 8 magistrates (titled translated to more familiar terminology). It handles 50% immigration cases, and the balance federal administrative law, intellectual property, admiralty, what we could call Indian law in the U.S., and claims against the federal government. There is also a separate federal tax court. The lion's share of its cases have a governmental party. Private law civil cases make up only a very small part of its docket. Many Canadian federal court cases would be heard in "Article I" courts in the United States. Indeed, it isn't clear to me that there are any civil jury trials in Canada's federal trial courts.

International Comparisons Of Hiring Discrimination

There have now been lots of resume-audit studies in which identical resumes but for the “minority-distinct” name are sent out to employers and callback rates are measured. A meta-study of 97 field experiments (N = 200,000 job applicants) in 9 countries in Europe and North America finds there is some discrimination in every county but, if anything, the USA has one of the lower rates of discrimination while France and perhaps also Sweden have very high levels.

From Marginal Revolution. 

France clearly has more discrimination in hiring (consistent with what I have heard informally), Sweden is close to having more discrimination than the U.S. at a statistically significant level. 

The other countries in the study (Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Norway) do not have a statistically significant difference in hiring discrimination from that of the United States or each other.

Omar Khadr Was Released On Bail Last Year

In 2007, I recounted the plight of Omar Khadr, a Guantanamo detainee who was fifteen when he ended up in the military prison charged with offenses taking place as early as when he was ten years old, who had been detained for five years at the time. 

He pleaded guilty to war crimes before a U.S. military tribunal in October of 2010. Five years later, in 2012, after ten years at Gitmo, he was transferred to a Canadian prison. He was released on bail pending an appeal in the U.S. Courts in May of 2015. Per Wikipedia, linked above:

He was the youngest prisoner and last Western citizen to be held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. He accepted an eight-year sentence, not including time served, with the possibility of a transfer to Canada after at least one year to serve the remainder of the sentence. Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a military commission for war crimes committed while still a minor. His conviction and sentence were widely denounced by civil rights groups and various newspaper editorials. His prosecution and imprisonment was condemned by the United Nations, which has taken up the issue of child soldiers. 

On September 29, 2012, Khadr was repatriated to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canadian custody. He was initially assigned to a maximum-security prison but moved to a medium-security prison in 2014. Khadr was released on bail in May 2015 (pending an appeal of his U.S. conviction) after the Alberta Court of Appeal refused to block his release as had been requested by the Canadian government. 

In 2013, Khadr filed a C$20,000,000 amended civil suit against the government of Canada for conspiring with the U.S. in abusing his rights. He said he had signed the plea agreement because he believed it was the only way he could gain transfer from Guantanamo, and claimed that he had no memory of the firefight in which he was wounded. Khadr's lawyers successfully challenged his incarceration in Canada as an adult offender. On May 14, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the federal government's position, ruling that Khadr had clearly been sentenced by the U.S. military tribunal as a minor. If he loses his appeal of the US conviction, underway in a separate action, he would serve any remaining time in a provincial facility rather than in a federal penitentiary.

He has served 4 years and 7 months of his eight year sentence, and apparently receives no credit for the eight years of time served he had at the time.

Sixteen years in prison for being a child soldier is absurd.

Blame Canada!

French Canadian oligarchs are sweet.

Americans are focused on the wrong border. It’s not Mexico, with all this dubious talk about building a wall, but Canada, with its Mounties, and comedy writers who move among us, betrayed only by the occasional mispronunciation of “about,” that threatens our way of life. If this nation was not founded on the free flow of syrup, it should have been. And now, as anyone with kids can tell you, the price of syrup has remained stable and high; it’s more expensive than oil. Is it Arab sheikhs who did this, Russian oligarchs? No. It’s Canadians, who, organized into an ironfisted cartel, have established a stranglehold on that honey-flavored elixir. 

In short, FPAQ—the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers—is OPEC. Formed in 1966, the federation was tasked with taking a business in which few could make a decent living—the price went north to south with the quality of the yield, which went north to south with the quality of the spring—and turning it into a respectable trade. This was accomplished in the classic way: quotas, rules. You control supply, you control price. You limit supply, you raise price. Because Quebec makes 72 percent of the world’s maple syrup, it’s been able to set the price. As of this writing, the commodity is valued at just over $1,300 a barrel, 26 times more expensive than crude. . . . I discovered this for myself on a recent trip to the supermarket. My son returned from the shelves with a small artisanal jug of Canadian syrup—“genuine maple” has prospered in concert with the boom in organic food—which cost . . . $15! It shocked me. I stormed up the aisle to see for myself, where I discovered Aunt Jemima, companion of so many Sunday mornings, in her babushka, costing just four bucks for a family-size jug. When I asked the cashier to explain this discrepancy, she pointed rudely at Aunt Jemima and said, “ ‘Cause that’s not real syrup.”

From Vanity Fair.

Which U.S. City Has Weather Most Similar To London?

I've seen the question of which U.S. city has weather most similar to London (which is relevant because a lot of U.S. fashion, particularly formal business clothing, is derived from London norms) discussed often, but rarely with empirical evidence.

The short answer is Seattle, Washington.

In London, the average high temperature in July is 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 45 degrees Fahrenheit in January.  It has 164 days of precipitation per year (45%), and 29.68 inches of precipitation per year.

The U.S. Data (from the National Climtatic Data Center, DESDIS, NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce via the 2016 World Almanac mostly based upon 1981-2010 data).

* U.S. cities that are similarly cool in July (+/- 7 degrees) include:

Anchorage, Alaska (65), Los Angeles, California (74), San Francisco, California (72), Caribou, Maine (76), Portland, Maine (79), Sault Saint Marie, Michigan (76), Duluth, Minnesota (76), and Seattle, Washington (76).

* U.S. cities that are similarly warm in January (+/- 7 degrees) include:

North Little Rock, Arkansas (50), Denver, Colorado (44), Wilmington, Delaware (40), Washington D.C. (43), Atlanta, Georgia (52), Boise, Idaho (38), Dodge City, Kansas (44), Louisville, Kentucky (43), Baltimore, Maryland (41), Kansas City, Missouri (38), St. Louis, Missouri (40), Reno, Nevada (46), Atlantic City, New Jersey (42), Albuquerque, New Mexico (47), New York City, New York (38), Raleigh, North Carolina (51), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (50), Portland, Oregon (47), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (40), Memphis, Tennessee (50), Nashville, Tennessee (47), Norfolk Virginia (48), Richmond, Virginia (47), Seattle, Washington (47), and Charleston, West Virginia (43).

* U.S. cities with similar amounts of precipitation per year (+/- 8 inches a year) include:

Chicago, Illinois (36.89), Des Moines, Iowa (36.01), Detroit, Michigan (33.47), Sault Saint Marie, Michigan (32.95), Duluth, Michigan (30.96), Minneapolis, Minnesota (30.61), Omaha, Nebraska (30.62), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (36.52), Portland, Oregon (36.03), Dallas, Texas (36.14), Burlington, Vermont (36.82), Seattle, Washington (37.49), and Milwaukee, Wisconsin (34.76).

* U.S. cities with similar numbers of days of precipitation per year (+/- 16 days a year) include:

Buffalo, New York (173), Burlington, Vermont (155), Caribou, Maine (165), Cleveland, Ohio (178), Grand Rapids, Michigan (168), Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (148), Portland, Oregon (158), and Seattle, Washington (150).

Analysis

There is exactly one city which is on all four lists: Seattle, Washington which is four degrees warmer in the summer and two degrees warmer in the winter.  It gets a 7.81 inches more precipitation per year than London but on 14 fewer days.  No other city is on both the January and the July temperature lists.  The slightly warmer January temperatures in Seattle, however, mean that Seattle gets much less snow than London whose average low temperature in January is 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Elsewhere in North America, Vancouver, British Columbia is a very close match to London in temperature with average January high (44), average July high (72), and in number of days of precipitation per year (165), but has about 50% more total precipitation per year (45.4 inches) (per Wikipedia).

All other American cities have hotter summers, colder winters or both.

Burlington, Vermont and Portland, Oregon have similar precipitation to London, and Portland, Oregon also has mild winters, but Portland's July high temperature averages 81, quite a bit warmer than London in the summer.  Burlington is as warm as Portland, Oregon in the summer, and has much cooler average highs (27) in the winter.

Sault Saint Marie has mild summers, similar amounts of precipitation, more days of precipitation (181), but much colder January average highs (23).  Duluth has fewer days of precipitation (137) and much, much colder January average highs (19).  Portland, Maine has cooler January average highs (31), more precipitation per year (47.25 inches), and fewer days of precipitation (136).

San Francisco (20.65 inches from 54 days of precipitation a year) is considerably drier than London and has somewhat warmer January average highs (56) but earns honorable mention for the seasonal morning fogs that it, like Seattle, shares with London.

The Rise Of The Nones?

Secularism is swiftly becoming the norm in Western Europe and Japan, and is becoming significantly more common in many places in world.  But, signals are mixed in much of the world as well.

The story does not discuss, however, the surge in Christianity generally in Africa, or the rise of Evangelical Christianity in lieu of Roman Catholicism in Latin America, or the massive return to religion from Soviet era levels in the former Soviet Union and to a lesser extent in China.  South Korea's mild step towards secularization, likewise follows a surge in Christian adherence in the 20th century that made it the Asian country with the highest percentage of Christians by far.

It isn't clear if there have been any shifts in religious adherence in predominantly Muslim and Hindu areas where religion has also become far more entangled in politics and nationalistic struggles.

Europe

* For the first time in Norwegian history, there are more atheists and agnostics than believers in God. 

* For the first time in British history, there are now more atheists and agnostics than believers in God. And church attendance rates in the UK are at an all-time low, with less than 2% of British men and women attending church on any given Sunday. 

* A recent survey found that 0% of Icelanders believe that God created the Earth. That’s correct: 0%. And whereas 20 years ago, 90% of Icelanders claimed to be religious, today less than 50% claim to be. 

* Nearly 70% of the Dutch are not affiliated with any religion, and approximately 700 Protestant churches and over 1,000 Catholic churches are expected to close within the next few years throughout the Netherlands, due to low attendance. 

* According to a recent Eurobarometer Poll, 19% of Spaniards, 24% of Danes, 26% of Slovenians, 27% of Germans and Belgians, 34% of Swedes, and 40% of the French, claim to not believe in “any sort of spirit, God, or life-force.”

North America

* In the United States, somewhere between 23% and 28% of American adults have no religious affiliation, and these so-called “nones” are not only growing in number, but they are becoming increasingly secular in their behaviors and beliefs. 

* Among Millennials - Americans in their 20s - over 35% are non-religious, constituting the largest cohort of secular men and women in the nation’s history. 

* In Canada, back in 1991, 12% of adults stated “none,” when asked their religion - today that is up to 24%.

Latin America and the Caribbean

* In South America, 7% of men and women in Mexico, 8% in Brazil, 11% in Argentina, 12% in El Salvador, 16% in Chile, 18% in the Dominican Republic, and 37% in Uruguay are non-religious — the highest such rates of Latin American secularity ever recorded. 

* Over 20% of Jamaicans are now non-religious.

Australia and New Zealand

* In Australia, 15% of the population said they had no religion in 2001, and it is up to at least 22% today. 

* In New Zealand, 30% of the population claimed no religion in 2001, but it had risen to 42% in 2013.  

East Asia

* In Japan, about 70% of adults claimed to hold personal religious beliefs sixty years ago, but today, that figure is down to only about 20%; In 1970 there were 96,000 Buddhist temples throughout Japan, but in 2007, there were 75,866 - and around 20,000 of those were un-staffed, with no resident priest. In the 1950s, over 75% of Japanese households had a kamidana (Shinto altar), but by 2006 this was down to 44% nationwide, and only 26% in major cities. 

* While 11% of South Koreans were atheists in 2005, that has increased to at least 15% as of late, and the percentage of South Koreans who described themselves as religious has dropped from 58% to 52% over the past decade. 

* Over 50% of Chinese adults are secular (although in Communist dictatorships where religion is officially oppressed, valid information on people’s religiosity is always hard to come by).

Africa

* In Africa, while religiosity remains high, there are none the less growing pockets of irreligion: over 5% of the those in Ghana claim to have no religion, and 9% of people in Madagascar and Tanzania, and 11% of people in Gabon and Swaziland are now non-religious. 

* Approximately 20% of Botswanans now claim to have no religion. 

Per the Huffington Post.

Liberals Win Majority In Canada

The Canadian parliament's House of Commons has 338 seats in the 2015 election.  The Liberal party won 188 of them, a safe majority.  In 2011, they had 34 out of 308 seats.  Losses were shared roughly equally between the Conservative Party and the New Democrat party.  The Bloc Quebecois gains six seats for a total of ten, while the Greens held steady with one seat.

A map of the results show the Conservative party weak almost everywhere except the farm country of the Great Plains and some big city suburbs in Ontario and Quebec.  Liberals dominated in big cities, in the Arctic, and in the Maritimes.  The NDP took rural, small town Canada outside the Great Plains.

Conservatives, with 99 seats, don't even have a 1/3rd majority in parliament, and all of the other parties with seats in parliament are to their left.  The Conservative party in Canada, moreover (aka the Tories), are also still to the left of U.S. Republicans.

Since Canada has a parliamentary system, this means that the Justin Trudeau, the new liberal Prime Minister, is for all practical purposes, king of Canada until the next election, chosen on a date of his choice up to five years from now.  Neither the Canadian Senate, nor the Governor-General would block any serious legislative initiative he offered, and the Canadian Supreme Court, while it finally has judicial review power after more than a century without it, still has less power than the U.S. Supreme Court in practice.

Is the strong liberal comeback in Canada a harbinger of things to come in the U.S. in 2016? I'd like to think so, but realistically, the anomaly in Canada was a collapse of the Liberal party in favor of the New Democrats in 2011, for uniquely Canadian reasons, with this year representing more of a return to the norm.  Basically, there is only room for one liberal party in the Canadian political ecology and the Liberals have grabbed that spot back from the New Democrats.  Canadians a few elections ago went through a similar process to winnow the number of conservative parties in the country down to one after a prolonged regional split of the country's conservative parties.

Scott Walker Doesn't Get It

You've got to admire a guy with a pure heart.  But, Scott Walker just doesn't get it.  His campaign has jumped the shark with its bold initiative to stop Canadians from illegally immigrating into the United States by crossing its 5,525 mile U.S.-Canada border.  The Onion couldn't have devised a more inept campaign slogan.

There are basically two problems with this approach.

First, Canadians don't want to illegally immigrate from a relatively hand gun free land with national health care to the far more troubled United States, and if they did want to, they wouldn't because they can easily immigrate to the United States legally at any local border crossing.

Second, anti-immigration stances are popular with Republicans because they are a dog whistle way for Republicans to continue to be racist without admitting it.  It is a policy driven by fear.  This doesn't work in the Canadian case. Who's afraid of Canadians? But, nobody gave Walker the memo.

Put a fork in him.  He's done.

Canada Is Burning As Usual, But Worse

Across Canada, there are more than 418 wildfires burning. To date, there have been more than 4,500 that have charred more than 2,150,000 hectares of forest. There are twice the number of fires that there were at this time last year when just over 2,200 fires burned 515,732 hectares of forest.

From here.

How much is 2,150,000 hectares?  That's 5,313,000 acres or so, which is equivalent to 8,301 square miles which is larger than Connecticut and Delaware combined.

The result is haze in the Eastern U.S. (including Denver) and a lot of burned out land in Canada. Most of the places where the wildfires are largest aren't heavily populated, and there have apparently not been many serious injuries or deaths or even massive property damage.  But, forests take a long time to recover from these events as we know all too well in Colorado.

Blasphemy Law In Canada

Jeremy Patrick (University of Southern Queensland School of Law) has posted The Curious Persistence of Blasphemy: Canada and Beyond on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the history and future of the crime of blasphemy. In the introduction, several key questions are examined:(1) What is blasphemy? (2) Why do people blaspheme? and (3) What are the real or perceived harms of blasphemy?  

Subsequently, Part I examines the history of blasphemy and blasphemy-like laws in six jurisdictions around the globe: England, Ireland, Australia, Pakistan, the United Nations, and the United States. The jurisdictions chosen illuminate the fact that blasphemy is a complex concept which can be regulated in a wide variety of ways. These six provide an excellent picture of the varied and diverse ways the concept of blasphemy has operated and an understanding as to why it remains relevant today.  

Part II of this dissertation turns away from a global, comparative examination of blasphemy and instead provides a comprehensive, in-depth study of a single jurisdiction: Canada. This sustained history of blasphemy in Canada, the first ever published, allows for a valuable snapshot of the evolution of the crime into its modern form.  

Part III synthesizes the research and analysis in Parts I and II to answer the fundamental questions: what is the future of the crime of blasphemy in Canada and beyond?

From here.

The article explains that:

In Canada, most lawyers and laypersons alike would be astonished to hear that the country still has a law prohibiting blasphemy on the books. Originally prosecuted as a common law crime, the offense was first statutorily prohibited in 1892 and is currently contained in Section 296 of the Criminal Code:19

(1) Every one who publishes a blasphemous libel is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
(2) It is a question of fact whether or not any matter that is published is a blasphemous libel.
(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section for expressing in good faith and in decent language, or attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject.

19 R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46 [Criminal Code].

Although this prohibition is now of dubious constitutionality given the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms several prosecutions for blasphemous libel can be found in Canada’s law reports, and dozens more are hidden in newspaper archives and courthouse files. Indeed, the offense has survived the normal processes responsible for “weeding out” obsolete legislation: critical public attention, repeal bills launched by reformists, law commissions, Criminal Code revision committees, and more. The survival of a criminal ban on blasphemy cannot therefore be attributed wholly to an inattentive legislature.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (aka "CONSTITUTION ACT, 1982, c. 11 (U.K.), Schedule B" provides in the pertinent parts:

PART I 

CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS 

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:  

Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms 

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. 

Fundamental freedoms 

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association. . .

24. (1) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.
(2) Where, in proceedings under subsection (1), a court concludes that evidence was obtained in a manner that infringed or denied any rights or freedoms guaranteed by this Charter, the evidence shall be excluded if it is established that, having regard to all the circumstances, the admission of it in the proceedings would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. . . .

33. (1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter.
(2) An Act or a provision of an Act in respect of which a declaration made under this section is in effect shall have such operation as it would have but for the provision of this Charter referred to in the declaration.
(3) A declaration made under subsection (1) shall cease to have effect five years after it comes into force or on such earlier date as may be specified in the declaration.
(4) Parliament or the legislature of a province may re-enact a declaration made under subsection (1).
(5) Subsection (3) applies in respect of a re-enactment made under subsection (4).

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, commonly known as the "notwithtstanding clause" allows the Canadian parliament to suspend certain parts of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms including the one containing Canada's freedom of religion, if it does so expressly and intentionally.  But, it has not, in fact, been invoked in the case of Canada's blasphemy laws.

Of course, unlike the American constitution and bill of rights, the Canadian constitution expressly recognizes the "supremacy of God" in its preamble and in Section 1 recognizes that the rights it grants are not absolute.  And, Canada's statute itself may comply by permitting sincere and "polite" blasphemy.  But, this statute is certainly an odd bird and the analysis in the linked article is worth a read.

Whose Afraid Of A Few Canadians?

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was making headlines Tuesday after canceling an appearance in Toronto, his spokesperson said that Cheney and his daughter "decided it was better for their personal safety they stay out of Canada."

From a March 13, 2012 story in the Los Angeles Times. Hat Tip to Colorado Pols.

Canada, of course, is famous for having far less crime than any of its neighbors to the South, and is not known for being a hotbed of terrorist activity. A lawsuit by a Canadian citizen faulting the Canadian government for cooperating in the Cheney devised policy of extraordinary rendition that caused their citizen to be tortured abroad has caused major headlines there.

The bottom line is that while Cheney always talked tough while in office, he now looks like a cowardly wimp.

A recent appearance by Cheney in Vancouver brought out fierce protests from usually docile Canadians that required police intervention.

Cheney also faces a 2010 felony indictment in Nigeria related to bribery his company, Haliburton, allegedly engaged in there while he was his CEO which Canada might extradict him upon, since Canada respects internationally legal arrangements and voluntarily participates in them much more so than the United States.

Cheney was the chief architect of an aggressive and constitutionally questionable set of tactics to deal with terrorism, and was a war hawk pushed for war with Iraq based on what turned out to be false pretenses related to weapons of mass destruction and a non-existent connection to the 9-11 attacks, during the administration of George W. Bush. Lawsuits against him in the United States based upon his alleged war crimes and civil rights violations have been dismissed on procedural grounds and under doctrines designed to protect senior political officials from liability for national security decision making.

His companies, which provide private security services in war zones, have also been criticized for creating an unaccountable legion of mercenaries who harmed local Iraqis with impunity and damaged U.S. diplomatic interests while enriching him and his shareholders.

In Cheney's recent memoir, which his trip was probably intended to promote to some extent, he was unapologetic.

Canadian election produces sea change in partisan landscape

Election results from the 2011 election in Canada for its 308 seat federal parliament dramatically changed the partisan landscape there.

Voters in ridings previously held by the Bloc Québécois defected en masse to the New Democratic Party, while about half the seats previously held by the Liberal party were split between the Conservative Party and the NDP.

The Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper increased its number of seats from 143 to 167, giving its a majority (which required 155 seats) with a certain amount of cushion against intraparty dissent. In the most recent parliament, the Conservative party has led parliament with a minority government in the absence of a firm multi-party coalition after both the 2006 and 2008 elections, and has been forced to seek support from other parties for legislation on a case by case basis. It won 39.6% of the popular vote. It picked up 26 seats from Liberal MPs, 2 from NDP MPs and one from an independent MP. The Conservative Party is dominant in the Prairie provinces of Alberta (27/28 seats), Saskatchewan (13/14 seats) and Manitoba (11/14 seats) where it commanded popular vote majorities. It also won 73/106 seats in Ontario, 21/36 seats in British Columbia, and 8/10 seats in New Brunswick, as well as the only seat for the Yukon and the only seat for Nunavut.

The modern Conservative Party in Canada is the product of a merger of the Canadian Alliance (formerly the Reform Party), which was stronger in the West, and Progressive Conservative party, which was stronger in the East, in 2003. While the Conservative Party is the farthest political party to the political right in Canada, and favors favours lower taxes, smaller government, more decentralization of federal government powers to the provinces, a tougher stand on "law and order" issues, and a more active role in foreign military operations than the other parties, it is still considerably more socially liberal than the American Republican party, for example, supporting civil unions for same sex couples, even though it does not support gay marriage. It might be compared to New England's Republicans in the American political spectrum.

The New Democrat party led by Jack Layton, a party of the left that previously held just 36 seats in parliament, became the leading opposition party with 102 seats and 30.6% of the popular vote. The NDP surrender two seats to the Conservative Party, while picking up six seats from the Conservative Party and one from an independent MP. Before the election, the center of mass in the NDP was in Ontario, now it is Francophone with a majority of its MPs hailing from Quebec. The NDP is a social-democratic successor to the Labour party in Canada and roughly corresponds in its political views to that of the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party in the United States.

The Liberal party led by Michael Ignatieff (who was defeated in his riding and resigned as party leader), a center-left party that has either governed (for 69 years of the 20th century) or been the leading opposition party in Canada for as long as anyone can remember went from holding 77 seats as the second largest political party to just 34, garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Twenty-three of the seats it lost were picked up by the Conservative Party, while 17 were picked up by the New Democrats. Politically, the Liberal party roughly corresponds to the Democratic Party in the United States without its progressive caucus. Generally speaking, the Liberals are stronger relative to the NDP in the Maritimes, while the NDP is stronger relative to the Liverals in the West, and the two are evenly matched in Ontario.

The New Democrats and Liberals put forward a candidate in every seat, and the Conservative put forward a candidate in all but one of the ridings.

The nationalist Bloc Québécois under the leadership of Gilles Duceppe (who was defeated in his riding and resigned as party leader) was crushed, going from holding 49 seats following the 2008 election to holding just 4 seats (it contested 75 seats) and winning 6.0% of the popular vote (and less than a quarter of the popular vote in Quebec). At least 44 of the seats lost by the Bloc were picked up by the New Democrats. Quebec is now represented in Canada's federal parliament by 58 NDP representatives, 7 Liberals, 6 Conservatives, and 4 Bloc members (who no longer hold official party status). Historically, the Bloc has been a big tent on the liberal-conservative spectrum within the general boundaries of mainstream political stances in Canada. It isn't clear from where I stand if the mass defection of Bloc voters to the NDP is a one time blip over some recent political misstep, or a long run death knell for the federal wing of the Quebec nationalist movement.

The Green Party, whose party leader is Elizabeth May, which held no seats after the 2008 election (or in any prior one) won one seat in parliament (Elizabeth May in the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, in British Columbia) and garnered 3.9% of the popular vote (a decline from 6.8% in 2008). The Green Party contested all but four of the seats. The seat won by the Green Party was previously held by a Conservative Party MP. It's agenda is similar to that of the American Green Party.

Independents and unaffiliated candiates held two seats after the 2008 election, but won none in 2011. Sixty-one independent and unaffiliated candidates and thirteen minor parties also sought seats in the Canadian federal parliament without success. None of the minor parties won more than 0.1% of the popular vote.

Canada is to the left politically of the United States. About sixty percent of Canadians vote for political parties to the left of the Canadian Conservative Party, despite is majority victory due to the partisan divisions on the Canadian left, and it is itself to the left of the American Republican party. The median MP in the Canadian parliament is roughly comparable in politics to a Blue Dog Democrat.

Note that while parties of the left and center-left won a majority of the popular vote, that the conservative party was able to win a majority of the seats in parliament, because the political left split the vote among multiple candidates while the political right did not to nearly the same extent. This was particularly a factor in Ontario where the NDP and Liberal Party received almost equal shares of the popular vote, and combined received a majority of the popular vote, but received only about a quarter of the total number of MP seats contested in the election.

After many decades of having multiple viable political parties, the 2011 election seems to portend a shift to what might become a two party system in Canada, similar to that of the United States with a similar electoral system. The NDP and Liberal party will be under strong pressure in the wake of the 2011 to follow the lead of the parties of the right in Canada in 2003 and merge. A merged NDP and Liberal party would have easily won a majority of the seats in parliament in the 2011 election.

Japan and Immigration

A recent article in The Economist illustrates the fact that opposition to immigration has very little to do with absolute levels of immigration.

In Japan, just 1.7% of the population is considered non-Japanese (about 2.2 million out of 127 million), of which 400,000 are people of Korean descent born in Japan and assimilated almost entirely into its culture (some even have parents born in Japan). Thus, only about 1.4% of the people in Japan are foreign born.

Another large share of immigrants in Japan, probably about 350,000 people, are of Japanese descent and came to Japan since the late 1980s from Brazil and Peru "to work in the industrial clusters around Tokyo and Nagoya in Aichi prefecture that serve the country’s giant carmakers and electronics firms." The immigrants may not be as assimilated, but look much more like typical Japanese natives and often have Japanese last names.

There are about 600,000 Chinese immigrants and about 200,000 first generation Korean immigrants.

Despite these very low absolute levels of immigration, and the fact that Japan has among the highest life expectencies and lowest fertility rates on the planet, creating a shortage of Japanese residents of working age, there is great political and public concern about immigration, with many of the Japanese wanting to restrict immigration further.

Also, notably, the Japanese see profound differences between East Asian ethnicities, like Koreans, the Chinese, and the Japanese, that would all be lumped into a single sub-ethnicity or race by American demographers, something that illustrates how socially constructed the boundaries of race are, even though the differences in apparence that come with ancestry are purely hereditary.

By comparison, the United States, with a population of a little more than 300 million people, has a foreign born population in excess of 33 million (about 12 percent of the total population), and the U.S. considers everyone born in the United States to be an American (as well as many naturalized U.S. citizens who are foreign born). About 19% of the residents of Canada and Australia are foreign born.

If I recall correctly, there have also been studies that show that the greatest political opposition to immigration comes from places like the American South, where immigration is least common in absolute terms, while places like Southern California, the Texas border and New York City with very large immigrant populations, tend to support more lenient immigration policies. Familiarity breeds comfort, not contempt.

Victim or Criminal?

A Canadian boy who was detained at Guantanamo Bay starting at age 15 was tried as a war criminal in a U.S. military tribunal. The charges against him were dismissed on procedural grounds, but are likely to be reinstated. The notion that a 15 year pushed into military service as a child soldier is a victim, rather than a criminal has escaped the Department of Defense.

Also, unless the military is seeking to execute the boy (and the Department of Defense has publicly stated it seeks a sentence of less than life imprisonment), now 20, what is at stake? He is already detained indefinitely, and has been incarcerated in an exceptional military prison for five years. According to the New York Times (link in the link above), quoting his attorneys, "prosecutors . . . included in their charges acts that occurred when Mr. Khadr was younger than 10."

U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, where the boy was apprehended did not begin until late 2001, when the boy was 14 years old. The Military Commissions Act, making conspiracy, whcih is one of the charges against the boy a war crime, was not enacted until 2006.

The Canadian public is aware of the case and not impressed. Considering that Canada is one of the main U.S. allies in Iraq, this may be bad foreign policy, as well as an injustice.