The Ugly Canada Thread

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Under JT's watch, the SJWs at the CBC are running amok. Their funding is secure so they can say whatever they want, and pursue whatever stories that they want. All they have to do is throw in a few couch words like "allegedly" and everything is cool as far as the legal department is concerned. Sources can remain safely anonymous and "alleged" perpetrators are hung out to dry. It's so easy these days to destroy someone's life and reputation - and with no consequences to boot. Literally every second story on our supposed national public broadcaster deals with social justice issues. There is quite definitely an agenda being pushed. The National is a mere shadow of its former self under the Mansbridge era. I detest the new format. The CBC has lost a (formerly) devoted viewer.

In the case we are talking about someone literally had their life destroyed getting shot in the head. The person who suffered no real consequence (minus maybe a loss of his crops and a trial) is the man who shot him.

Everyone on here arguing about bad media coverage has yet to give a compelling reason why Stanley avoided a manslaughter charge. Or for that matter unsafe handling of a firearm.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I couldn't find anything on CBC to that effect. The CP wording used in multiple media outlets is this:



"The SUV driver testified..." is not the same as the CBC "saying" Boushie and his friends went to get help with a flat tire. I think you can spare yourself the anguish over the CBC being "fake news."

No. Seriously, there's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for a news outlet to be pushing, post-verdict, the narrative that the one and only reason Boushie and his group went near the Stanley farm is to get help for a flat tire.

That's the practical definition of "Fake News". It's not literally 100% fake, completely fabricated stuff that has zero relationship to reality. At least not here in Western democracies, where no new outlet could possibly get away with that level of fabrication. When people say fake news here, in practice they mean any news which, when taken at face value by a listener like Acajack, will misinform him.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

No. Seriously, there's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for a news outlet to be pushing, post-verdict, the narrative that the one and only reason Boushie and his group went near the Stanley farm is to get help for a flat tire.

That's the practical definition of "Fake News". It's not literally 100% fake, purely fabricated stuff. At least not here in Western democracies. When people say fake news here, in practice they mean any news which, when taken at face value by a listener like Acajack, will misinform him.

I'm also confused by the affirmation "the SUV driver testified", because according to the trial, the "SUV driver" was Boushie - he was sitting in the driver's seat when he was shot. A dead person can't testify.

Unless there is something I am misunderstanding. Perhaps someone else was driving the SUV when they arrived at the farm, got out and then Boushie took his place?

Anyway... very confusing.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I am not saying the CBC is "fake news", but this is the story I was referring to from Saturday. I guess they changed the wording at some point. (I definitely didn't dream that up.)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-vigil-colten-boushie-verdict-1.4530151

Obviously not everyone on here will believe me about this one, but it's not hard to find lots of news articles about this going back for months where it's noted that Boushie and his friends were just looking for help because they got a flat tire.

Until this weekend when I started reading up on it, I myself believed that that was the story based on all of the news reports I had heard over the past few months (most of them on the CBC I assume - it's the only news outlet I listen to that covers this type of issue), so again, I am not dreaming up this media angle. Where else would I get that idea all by myself?

So does this mean the CBC is now "fake news"? Certainly not. But it is revealing of a certain eagerness to jump to conclusions about certain issues. I would surmise that the article about the protest on the Hill was written by a younger staffer at CBC's local Ottawa station, who made some quick assumptions about the case simply because of the fact that they were people protesting the death of a young indigenous man at the hands of a "white" farmer.

Yeah, but frankly, that's pretty much the exact definition of what people mean by "fake news" in Western democracies: "gross misinformation that the broadcaster's highly-paid army of lawyers could technically argue is defensible, if it ever came to that."

As MonctonRad points out, you just add an "allegedly" here and there and you're legally pretty much covered.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Yeah, but frankly, that's pretty much the exact definition of what people mean by "fake news" in Western democracies: "gross misinformation that the broadcaster's highly-paid army of lawyers could technically argue is defensible, if it ever came to that."

I still don't think the CBC at this point is a "fake news" organization though.

But I am keeping an eye on them for sure.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Until this weekend when I started reading up on it, I myself believed that that was the story based on all of the news reports I had heard over the past few months (most of them on the CBC I assume - it's the only news outlet I listen to that covers this type of issue) ...

The fact that you, Acajack, a generally well-informed and well-educated individual, were actually made to believe a false narrative for a while, before you managed to make the effort / get a chance to inform yourself better, is pretty much the textbook definition of fake news in the Western world.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I still don't think the CBC at this point is a "fake news" organization though.

But I am keeping an eye on them for sure.

Out of curiosity, do you think you'd be able to name major Western news organizations that would qualify according to your definition?

I agree with you that if we stick to the literal definition, CBC is most definitely not a fake news organization, but nor is any other Western news organizations that I know of; the only true fake news outlets out there would be found in places like Russia and North Korea and China.

If we instead draw the practical definition bar in order to include outlets like CNN and Fox, as we generally hear, then I'd say CBC is borderline.

(NPR would be a good example of reliable non-fake news, even by my looser practical definition.)

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

In the case we are talking about someone literally had their life destroyed getting shot in the head. The person who suffered no real consequence (minus maybe a loss of his crops and a trial) is the man who shot him.

Everyone on here arguing about bad media coverage has yet to give a compelling reason why Stanley avoided a manslaughter charge. Or for that matter unsafe handling of a firearm.

My comments were directed towards the current sad state of CBC News in general, not the Boushie case in particular, and in a previous post regarding the Boushie case, I made comments very similar to yours. There was fault on both sides and lots of mitigating factors for Mr. Stanley's actions but at the very least he was guilty of careless use of a firearm, and at the very most he was guilty of manslaughter. He should not have gotten off scot free, and should have recieved some jail time.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Out of curiosity, do you think you'd be able to name major Western news organizations that would qualify according to your definition?

I agree with you that if we stick to the literal definition, CBC is most definitely not a fake news organization, but nor is any other Western news organizations that I know of; the only true fake news outlets out there would be found in places like Russia and North Korea and China.

If we instead draw the practical definition bar in order to include outlets like CNN and Fox, as we generally hear, then I'd say CBC is borderline.

(NPR would be a good example of reliable non-fake news, even by my looser practical definition.)

I don't think any of those organizations makes "fake news" their bread and butter (yet), but Fox News definitely does it a lot and CNN is getting quite close to being just a mirror image of Fox News.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

He should not have gotten off scot free

If you look at everything he went through in the past year and a half, I don't think it's fair to say he went off scot free.

Truly getting off scot free would be if racist cops had shown up at the farm after the shooting, everyone had agreed to say "meh, only an indian..." and dump the body in a stream, then it would have continued to be business as usual on the Stanley farm, up to this very day and the foreseeable future.

(That's not an unrealistic scenario -- could've had happened in the U.S. South a century ago. Now THAT is getting off scot free.)

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don't think any of those organizations makes "fake news" their bread and butter (yet), but Fox News definitely does it a lot and CNN is getting quite close to being just a mirror image of Fox News.

Think about it: if Fox News' coverage of this trial made the listener believe that the one and only reason Boushie and his group went near the Stanley farm is to get help for a flat tire, wouldn't we consider that a good example of fake news, and pan Fox News for it...?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Pretty sure both sides can... and as you say, if both sides have an equal number of peremptory challenges, the jury composition will be random in the end (and statistically likely to be representative) unless one side is too stupid to use them the same way the other side does. So there could be something more to it.






In all of the above you've got prosecution and defense reversed, but otherwise it's all stuff I can agree with.

In theory as you say the prosecution should have spent all their peremptory challenges eliminating white jurors and provided they have the same number of those as the defense, the jury will statistically have 2 native/métis and 10 non-native Saskatchewanians (if selected on a province-wide basis), unless the jurors are selected from a smaller local jurisdiction only (which may happen to be nearly all white, which would explain everything: the random jury we ended up with after both sides exhausted their vetoes turned out all white, as statistically expected).

So the Boushie family are apparently in Ottawa today to meet with "ministerial" type people. Not sure if they'll actually meet with the PM but meetings with the justice and indigenous affairs ministers appear almost certain. (Otherwise why would they have come all this way?)

It does look like there might need to be some changes to the way juries are selected but in this particular case the way it's portrayed as "an all-white jury clears white guy who shot native kid" appears wrong-headed for a number of reasons.

Again... starting with the *facts*.

In the lead-up to this case there was a specific concern for having as representative a jury as was possible.

During the process for selecting 12 jurors and 2 alternates, a selection region was used that comprised the entire western quarter or third of Saskatchewan from its northern to its southern borders.

A list of some 750 potential jurors was selected from this wide region.

Each side was allowed to exclude 12 potential jurors (or maybe 20 as is sometimes allowed in touchy cases). In any event, even if both sides excluded 20 each that still leaves over 700 potential jurors.

Saskatchewan is about 15% aboriginal. Even if they were under-represented in the original pool, after the "purge" of a dozen or 20 aboriginals (as was allegedly done by the defence) there still would have been a sufficient pool of potential aboriginal jurors (in the range of 50-70) left to be chosen.

Another thing is that all I've heard so far is allegations that the defence excluded anyone who seemed aboriginal and this led to an all-white jury.

I haven't heard anyone actually confirm that the jury was all-white. Does anyone here have access to this information? Can this even be confirmed with certainty anyway, due to privacy and confidentiality issues?

And even if the jury was "all-white" (meaning = there were no aboriginals on it), why would we assume that they would be biased out of a natural affinity for Mr. Stanley and hostility for Mr. Boushie, to the point where it would taint their judgement?

Isn't this what we are supposed to be getting away from as a society and a species? The assumption that people will behave a certain way (usually negatively) simply because of their skin colour or some other trait?

So you're telling me we have to fight this problem by actually giving it even more legs?

Fighting for peace, fucking for virginity.. all over again.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Think about it: if Fox News' coverage of this trial made the listener believe that the one and only reason Boushie and his group went near the Stanley farm is to get help for a flat tire, wouldn't we consider that a good example of fake news, and pan Fox News for it...?

As I said, I am "concerned" about the CBC...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Under JT's watch, the SJWs at the CBC are running amok. Their funding is secure so they can say whatever they want, and pursue whatever stories that they want. All they have to do is throw in a few couch words like "allegedly" and everything is cool as far as the legal department is concerned. Sources can remain safely anonymous and "alleged" perpetrators are hung out to dry. It's so easy these days to destroy someone's life and reputation - and with no consequences to boot. Literally every second story on our supposed national public broadcaster deals with social justice issues. There is quite definitely an agenda being pushed. The National is a mere shadow of its former self under the Mansbridge era. I detest the new format. The CBC has lost a (formerly) devoted viewer.

I started listening to CBC Radio (and Radio-Canada) about 25 years ago for what I will call professional reasons. Prior to that I was your typical early 20s guy who only listened to mainstream commercial radio stations.

Today, Radio-Canada is my radio mainstay but as in many other regions I am sure both CBC and Rad-Can are right next to each other on the dial and so if Rad-Can is boring me it's just a quick tap of the SEEK button to hear what CBC has to say.

CBC Radio today is definitely no longer "Peter Gzowski's CBC" (for those old enough to remember him). Overall it's still pretty good public radio but it's noticeable how certain swathes of Canada (geographically and demographically) are largely absent from most of its programming.

Indigenous issues occupy a very significant proportion of the air time right now, certainly way above the 5% or so that aboriginal people (across all definitions and categories) make up in the overall Canadian population. Perhaps this is making amends for the first 60 or 70 years of Canada's broadcasting history where indigenous people were largely invisible except for a few tokemisms. But it's definitely noticeable how the aboriginal reality is front an centre on the CBC like never before.

Another thing that's very noticeable is the CBC's focus on what you might call "new" Canadians. Again, this is a group that previously was largely ignored but now is also front and centre in a lot of the CBC's programming. This is a bit different from the situation with aboriginal peoples as the population share is quite a bit larger. About 22% of Canadians were born abroad and another good chunk of our population are the children of immigrants. But still... the shift is quite noticeable.

All of which means that there is less and less on the CBC that Bob and Lorna Wilson in Peterborough can relate to.

Good or bad? Not sure. But it's the obvious reality to anyone who listens to the CBC these days.

For those who can listen to it, Radio-Canada is a bit different even though they've also upped their coverage of aboriginal issues and also of immigrant communities. (The national programming has also upped its coverage of francophones outside Quebec, also IMO way out of proportion to the number of listeners they likely have there relative to how many are in Quebec.)

But they're still way more likely to pay attention to the Gagnon family that has a dairy farm St-Césaire (and think they have something interesting to share), than the CBC is to pay attention to people like Bob and Lorna.

A final note is that French-speaking Canada as a socio-cultural entity (that makes up 20-25% of the country) doesn't really exist on CBC outside of news broadcasts where you're reminded the PM and some ministers have French names, the Quebec government is being mean to nice Muslim ladies who simply want to take their bus pass photos with a veil, or some small town in Quebec got flooded and the residents are clipped in French with English voice-overs... That and Jim Corcoran's late night weekend francophone music show A Propos which I believe is still aired. I believe Bernard St-Laurent's socio-linguistic program C'est la vie was canned maybe two or three years ago?

In fairness though francophone Canada (especially Quebec) is quite well served by multiple Radio-Canada networks and platforms on TV, radio, etc.

But it's still a pretty significant "reality of Canada" that CBC's audience gets very little exposure to.

Just a question of priorities I guess.

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by Acajack

So the Boushie family are apparently in Ottawa today to meet with "ministerial" type people. Not sure if they'll actually meet with the PM but meetings with the justice and indigenous affairs ministers appear almost certain. (Otherwise why would they have come all this way?)

It does look like there might need to be some changes to the way juries are selected but in this particular case the way it's portrayed as "an all-white jury clears white guy who shot native kid" appears wrong-headed for a number of reasons.

Again... starting with the *facts*.

In the lead-up to this case there was a specific concern for having as representative a jury as was possible.

During the process for selecting 12 jurors and 2 alternates, a selection region was used that comprised the entire western quarter or third of Saskatchewan from its northern to its southern borders.

A list of some 750 potential jurors was selected from this wide region.

Each side was allowed to exclude 12 potential jurors (or maybe 20 as is sometimes allowed in touchy cases). In any event, even if both sides excluded 20 each that still leaves over 700 potential jurors.

Saskatchewan is about 15% aboriginal. Even if they were under-represented in the original pool, after the "purge" of a dozen or 20 aboriginals (as was allegedly done by the defence) there still would have been a sufficient pool of potential aboriginal jurors (in the range of 50-70) left to be chosen.

Another thing is that all I've heard so far is allegations that the defence excluded anyone who seemed aboriginal and this led to an all-white jury.

I haven't heard anyone actually confirm that the jury was all-white. Does anyone here have access to this information? Can this even be confirmed with certainty anyway, due to privacy and confidentiality issues?

And even if the jury was "all-white" (meaning = there were no aboriginals on it), why would we assume that they would be biased out of a natural affinity for Mr. Stanley and hostility for Mr. Boushie, to the point where it would taint their judgement?

Isn't this what we are supposed to be getting away from as a society and a species? The assumption that people will behave a certain way (usually negatively) simply because of their skin colour or some other trait?

So you're telling me we have to fight this problem by actually giving it even more legs?

Fighting for peace, fucking for virginity.. all over again.

To be fair the CBC has now been saying that they cannot confirm the ethnicity of the jury.

[ciudad_del_norte]

Wow. Not going to lie, I'm a bit surprised at how many people are here with the "both sides" kind of argument on here.

My thoughts:
-The depth and darkness of anti-indigenous racism in this country, and how nasty it can get in the rural prairies isn't a surprise to many of us. But what is the extent to which the "system" allowed that to devalue a life.
-This incident, and many of the comments serve to illustrate the extent to which "rural crime" on the prairies has become a dogwhistle for anti indigenous racism.

I'm not indigenous, but I'm also not white. Years ago I was driving with some much younger siblings through BC and our vehicle broke down. There was no cell reception, so I walked about 25 km to get to cell reception. There were some residences along the way, and I considered asking for help, but decided against it for this very reason. I've grown up knowing that how I look is immediately threatening to large segment of people, whether they would consider themselves racist or not. This means, in general that I'm less likely to be trusted, less likely to be helped. Worst case scenario, somebody gets freaked out and reacts violently. The chances of actually getting any help and any of those properties was not worth the time for me, so I continued walking.

The stories aren't quite the same, I know that. But also, people will do stupid things. The problem is that for some of us, doing a stupid thing may cost us our life - and our system and society will basically say its okay.

Do people honestly think that had the victim been white he would have been killed?

AND if he was, would the verdict had been the same?

What if it was a white kid getting shot on a reserve? Same outcome?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

I'm not indigenous, but I'm also not white. Years ago I was driving with some much younger siblings through BC and our vehicle broke down. There was no cell reception, so I walked about 25 km to get to cell reception. There were some residences along the way, and I considered asking for help, but decided against it for this very reason. I've grown up knowing that how I look is immediately threatening to large segment of people, whether they would consider themselves racist or not. This means, in general that I'm less likely to be trusted, less likely to be helped. Worst case scenario, somebody gets freaked out and reacts violently. The chances of actually getting any help and any of those properties was not worth the time for me, so I continued walking.

The stories aren't quite the same, I know that. But also, people will do stupid things. The problem is that for some of us, doing a stupid thing may cost us our life - and our system and society will basically say its okay.

Those two stories aren't just "not quite the same". They're entirely different.

Had you knocked on someone's door for help, that wouldn't have been "doing a stupid thing".

Had you been victimized as a result of that, it would have been a totally different situation from the Boushie case.

And it's frankly absurd to presume that the legal outcome of such a case would have been exactly the same as the Boushie case simply because of your appearance and the (assumed) appearance of the person whose door you would have knocked at.

[ciudad_del_norte]

That's not the point.

I didn't think I would get shot in the head if I asked for help. But I am well aware that that appearing threatening combined with "private property" is not a combination that is likely to work out well for me. I may not be killed, but I'm almost certainly not going to get any help either. It's not awesome, but honestly its become enough of my life over time that its just second nature. Scared people are scary, and to a lot of people I am scary just by existing.

The point is that there are entirely different dynamics here for people that are perceived as threatening. The point is that so many people have spent their time looking for a way to justify that whatever Colten Boushie did, it could have been stupid enough to warrant his death. The point is that the undercurrent of these discussions is that he was enough of a threat to warrant deadly force. But so much of him being threatening is based on the fact that he was indigenous, whether we want to admit it or not.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

But also, people will do stupid things. The problem is that for some of us, doing a stupid thing may cost us our life - and our system and society will basically say its okay.

Do people honestly think that had the victim been white he would have been killed?

AND if he was, would the verdict had been the same?

What if it was a white kid getting shot on a reserve? Same outcome?

You're taking this in an odd direction.

I was young once.

My friends and I did stupid shit.

But we never would have gotten into the same situation that Colten Boushie and friends got themselves into.

Why? Not because none of us were aboriginal. (My friends in my youth weren't all "white".)

But because our initial instinct if we got a flat tire wouldn't have been to go steal stuff to get out that bind.

And if some of the wilder ones in the group (which we did have) had suggested such a thing, they would have been talked out of it by the others.

And even if we'd ended up on someone's property, maybe looking like a bunch of scruffs coming back from drinking at the beach, if the owners had indicated we were not welcome in some way, we would have gotten the hell out of there.

Look, I am totally cognizant of the racist and oppressive socio-cultural environment that can exist on the Prairies for aboriginal people (especially youth) and how this leads many of them to become jaded, mistrustful, and even defiant.

But as in any functioning society, this doesn't give you the right to do anything you want, or to expect that your actions will always be without consequences. Often tragic ones.

BTW, I am not trying to defend Gerald Spencer here. It sounds like the Crown may have bungled this case particularly with the charges they chose to levy against him.

[Xelebes]

The biggest problem with the Stanley case is that what Stanley admitted to doing in his testimony should have had the jury finding him guilty of manslaughter. The jury disagreeing with it is a case of jury judging not on the finding of law and not the jury judging not on the finding of fact. The crown can appeal the ruling on these grounds. This is a case of jury nullification that can have severe consequences and the FN community should be alarmed at how this case unfolded.