Beating The Summer Heat

A toddler and her vanilla ice cream quickly become one.

Big brother is far more trained in the art of ice cream cone consumption.

And here I am taking a picture of the ice cream scavenger.

Oops, you need to zoom in a bit! There we go.

Sudan Offered To Kill Abousfian Abdelrazik

In what has admittedly been a very slow news week, Paul Koring’s article in the Globe and Mail today is nothing short of stunning. According to three-year-old documents obtained from the government regarding exchanges between Sudan’s Foreign Affairs agency and Canada, Sudan hinted at the time that they would seek a “permanent solution” to the Abdelrazik dilemma. In a meeting with the MFA of Sudan, Canadian documents show:

There is clearly a very strong desire on the part of the Sudanese government to deal with this case for once and for all; we judge as significant their verbal reference to a “permanent solution” to this case. Despite a series of irritants over the last year, Canada has maintained a constructive working relationship with the Government of Sudan, and we believe that this is an example of the MFA and NSI going out of its way (and possibly engendering a degree of political risk) on our behalf to keep military intelligence from taking expedient measures to deal with the case (military intelligence is the most powerful and impenetrable security agency in Sudan, and operates with complete impunity – there is strong evidence that most of Sudan’s ‘disappeared’ did so at the hands of military intelligence).

What has been clearly and forcefully implied by the MFA is that this is, in effect, our last chance to deal with this case on positive terms. All three Sudanese agencies are losing patience with what they perceive as lack of Canadian action when earlier openings presented themselves.[...]

Those two short paragraphs say quite a lot, don’t they? As the memo describes, the MFA isn’t just implying, but outright threatening Canada that Sudan’s military intelligence agency will take over the case if Canadian officials don’t step up their efforts to deal with Mr.Abdelrazik. The natural conclusion of turning it over to the military is that he would be executed and then “disappear” from the face of the Earth. What’s also interesting about the memo is that it describes Sudan’s impatience with Canada’s inaction and delays, something I think that would definitely have been apt three years from the time of that memo as well.

The government documents go on to show that the reaction from Foreign Affairs was rather muted and “indifferent”, insisting that it was not a security case, but a consular one, and ordered officials to continue offering Sudan the same reasoning despite indications that Mr.Abdelrazik might be imperiled by such stonewalling. It’s rather difficult to know why the government chose to act this way. Did they believe that by maintaining their same position and consistency, that it would eventually yield fruit? Or does it reveal a more damning indication of how our government regarded Mr.Abdelrazik’s life?

It would appear that although the memo was written in the early days of the new Conservative government, that the patience of Sudan was worn thin during their dealings with the Liberal government. Could it have been a lack of familiarity with the file? A reluctance to deal with Sudan in a difficult negotiation that may further endanger Mr.Abdelrazik’s life? Unfortunately, it does look as though Canada acted with less diligence than I imagine most Canadians would expect.

“You should restate our position and make no further comment,” Canadian diplomats in Khartoum were ordered in an e-mail from Canada’s director of foreign intelligence at the time. There’s no information as to whether senior members of the government knew about the extra-judicial execution threat at the time. Perhaps equally disturbing was the fact that Canada’s position, maintained under both the Liberal and Conservative governments, that Mr.Abdelrazik’s imprisonment was merely a “consular” matter, usually meant to denote a Canadian imprisoned abroad, while there is strong evidence to suggest that it was operatives of Canada’s security agency CSIS that requested Abousfian Abdelrazik to be arrested in the Sudan in the first place.

For My Friends In Ontario

Uh, yeah. It’s a little warm out there.

In fact the company is sending us in to the job site at 6:30am tomorrow so that we can leave early and avoid the crushing afternoon heat.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Ottawa it’s not going so well:

Actually the temperatures look fine, it’s the estimated 50mm of rain expected over the 7 day forecast that has me flabbergasted, while Vancouver bakes under a Pacific sun. And I thought we were the “wet coast”?

The Horrors Of Canada’s Medical System

Normally I see Steven Crowder as a kind of a clown of sorts, but this episode is well worth the watch. The problem with our health care system, as Steven points out, is that the horror stories from friends, relatives, or your own personal experiences, are just too damned common to rule out as an aberration. It’s more likely that it’s the norm. I’ve had my own personal experiences with our system, both positive and negative. I’ve done the waiting room surrender as well, giving up after four hours and hoping for the best. I’ve also had good experiences. I cut myself pretty bad at work a few months ago, and I went to a clinic and was stitched up after only waiting about an hour and a half. And when I had my stitches out, I waited 10 minutes.

I don’t have a doctor either, since I don’t usually visit the doctor. I’m really not into the whole health care thing. I only go to a doctor when I’m bleeding and I can’t clot it myself. But I do pay about $5,000 for it through taxes, or at least that’s what I’m supposed to be paying, since the health care burden is estimated at around $5,000 per capita. Now wait a minute, you might say. I’m a single earner for a family of four, so while my burden is $20,000 for health care, I definitely don’t pay that much in taxes. So I must be getting more value for my care than I’m paying for, right?

That might be correct if I went to the doctor every month and ran tests and had exams. But my family and I are very low-impact users of our system. Which tells me that in our universal system, there are people who are skewing the proportional costs. Some people, like myself, might cost our system a few hundred dollars a year. If that. And then there are the cancer patients, the expensive operations, and the lengthy hospitalizations. I’m in favour of a hybrid system to remove some of that burden that Steven Crowder talks about, although he argues that such a mix is likely to fail since the rich will always get the best health care and the poor and middle classes will continue to have to use the public system.

It’s a very difficult subject, and I’m not sure I have any answers. But I do think the above video illustrates that we have very serious problems here. The World Health Organization list of best health care systems would seem to back up that assertion as well:

1. France
2. Italy
[...]
28. Israel
29. Morocco
30. Canada

If you want to read more about the specific criteria that WHO used to compile this list, you can read it here.