About those shared cost programs ...

In last night's final debate, Tom Mulcair said if he's elected, then Quebec - and only that province - would get the option to opt out of new shared cost programs, including his $15 per diem child care program.

I realize Canada has never been totally equal on social programs. For example, every province has the right to opt out of OAS and the CPP. Quebec, so far, is the only province to get out of the latter, with the RRQ. Other provinces can, presuming reciprocity in benefits is maintained - but so far, no one has. Even the proposed Ontario plan is just an add-on, not a complete substitute.

Every province can opt out of parental benefits for UI. Quebec, too, is so far the only province to do so - but that doesn't mean, as with the case above, no other province can.

As for education? Six provinces each have their own rules, including Ontario. Only four - the Maritimes and BC - are bound by the "old" rules.

The Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords each proposed that every province should be able to opt out of social programs provided they provide a substitute program that provides a similar result and objective. I think that's a good principle to follow here in the present day. If a province - any province, or territory for that matter - can provide a better program for less cost to the consumer, or even totally free, they should be able to and not be constrained by federal rules.

Personally, I favour child-care to be means-tested. Free for people on welfare and other indigents, then on a sliding scale upwards based on accurately declared income on a family's T1s. I wouldn't mind a cap-out, but even then I don't see why anyone  - even the one percent - should pay more than 20 bucks a day per child. And of course, if a family wants to raise their pre-school kids at home, I support that too, with a much enhanced amount for child benefits to reflect the offset.

But I don't support one size fits all. After all, this is Canada. We are a real federation of ten provinces and three territories. Each province may get specific rights in the Constitution, but we are not, as is sometimes alleged, Quebec and TROC ("The Rest of Canada"). Mulcair - and the other leaders, if they are so thinking - need to be reminded of that.

What's "barbaric" exactly?

Today, the PMS campaign announced if it gets re-elected on October 19th it will introduce legislation to make illegal "barbaric" practices. On the surface, this may sound, well, sound. There are very few people in Canada who think FGM is acceptable. Other forms of torture should be illegal, and in fact already are. But how far would this go? Do animal sacrifices for religious purposes count? What about radical forms of corporal punishment, such as using a switch?

Remember Herouxville? The declaration they issued that ostensibly was about a town's values but was entirely directed at Muslims, effectively saying they weren't welcome in the rural town? I have a feeling this is nothing but an attempt to shore up the Con vote in rural Quebec, where the NDP is holding on just, and the Liberals may be finally starting to gain round.

We should all have common values. But they need to be common, not just one party's. Besides which, what one person may see as "barbaric" is perfectly acceptable to another. On top of the "old stock" comment the other week, this isn't helping anyone.

What does Harper want from our military?

Brian Stewart has a good op-ed piece on what Harper has said what he has done for Canada's military, and what has really been done. Three words: Stretched. Too. Thin.

When you appropriate $10 billion more for defence spending than what you actually intend to spend, that's not "prudence". That's telling our fine men and women in uniform they don't count for much.

Don't match donations during an election!

Maybe it's me, but it seemed like awful timing when the Cons announced last week they were going to match donations to this year's Terry Fox Run, up to a ceiling of $35 million. Today, they retracted the pledge - for now. Awful timing, of course, because we're smack in the middle of an election, indeed in the final legs.

This wasn't like the Boxing Day Tsunami, or the earthquake in Pakistan, or even the Katrina horror. In each of those cases, the feds promised to match donations on a dollar for dollar basis provided those contributions went to legitimate NGOs (such as the Red Cross) or faith based charities (like, say, the Salvation Army). We did that because it was the right thing to do, because the victims needed as much help as possible. In some cases, the match proved to be too much. If I recall one example, Oxfam which had an annual budget of around $15 million got bombarded with over $60 million just from the tsunami, and they didn't know what to do with the money.

Of course cancer research is important. I've lost a mother, grandmother and aunt to cancer, so I kind of take it personally that we need to find a cure. I can't help but think if Terry Fox actually survived and finished his run, if the amount of money raised in his name in the 35 years since would be even a third of what it's turned out to be. I would hope not, of course - that actually pulling it off would have made donations go through the stratosphere.

We have every right to demand the federal government and the sub-national governments contribute what they can to sponsoring medical research, particularly in finding cures for these terrible diseases. And encouraging prevention and early intervention to stop cancer before it can spread - and quite possibly even be cured in the early stages.

But it doesn't help that the pledge was made right now. Yes, I will concede the Terry Fox Foundation made the request for funding. It has every right to, and one would expect a positive response. But the Fox family also said that this should be a multi-partisan effort and one party should not score political points over it.

Exactly right.

This reminds me of a line in the 2004 movie Head of State, starring Chris Rock. In one scene, the Republican candidate for President runs an ad emphasizing his support for breast cancer research, then drops the line that his opponent "supports breast cancer." Of course, Rock turns this around and speaks the truth about his country's serious issues and ends up winning narrowly.

Rather than trying to score points by winning favour of one of the country's most celebrated families, the parties should talk about health care. Not just research, of course. But also talking about moving from physician based care to a system where the patient and the community are key. About making drugs more affordable - including cancer drugs, which despite our strict price controls here are still far more expensive than alternate treatments like Mary Jane. (If that means Pharmacare, absolutely.) Where the call for better health is a universal value, rather than a partisan talking point.

We built our system of Medicare mainly because we saw good health as a non-partisan right; and that better off people should take care of the health of the less fortunate, and vice versa. It has major structural issues that need to be addressed, and the system overall has to be modernized. But for heaven's sake, let's not say that because one family is in agreement (or not), that makes one's party's policy better.

Bottom line - either all the parties should have agreed, or the appropriation should have waited until the new term, and properly voted on by Parliament.

Old stock???

For so many years, we in Canada have been trying to get away from the whole "we versus they" mentality. That one group of Canadians are better than another - that we are all in it together. The other night, Stephen Harper made a comment about so-called "old stock" Canadians.

What does he mean by that? To me, it suggests that true Canadians can only be those who can claim on both sides of their family an ancestry going back to les Habitants, the United Empire Loyalists or  the Patriots of the 1837 rebellions. Think pur laine or de souche, in reference to "true Quebecers", both terms of which are still used by the federalist paper La Presse.

I don't know what Harper's driving at. But for a guy who has staked his reputation and his career trying to make inroads in the immigrant community, something that used to be almost the exclusive preserve of the Liberal Party, I am not impressed.

We have a real three way race here for the first time - well, ever. No party is near the magic number of 170, in fact they are all in the range of 109 to 114 seats. We don't need distractions like this. We need to talk about the issues, and to suggest that this isn't that is, well, bizarre at the minimum.

I can only hope that Harper misspoke. This may not be a "money and the ethnic vote" moment, but as a second generation Canadian I have to say I'm spooked. Certainly, he isn't getting my vote. He wasn't anyway, but he certainly wouldn't now regardless. If Harper has had a hidden agenda all this time, he may finally tipped his hand.

Don't let the refugees down

Yeah, it's been a while. But I had to take to my keyboard today because of the refugee crisis that is swamping Europe - since many of them may be headed Canada's way. And I never thought, a month into the election, that it would become a debating point, but here we are.

I have an interest in this because my father and his brother, my uncle, came to Canada as refugees - in fact, fifty years ago this year. Having defected from the former Yugoslavia, they were lucky to have the choice of several countries to go to. They rejected a couple of South American countries because of their lousy currencies. Australia offered an instant ticket out of Italy where the refugee camp was, but my Dad and uncle told me that despite the country's large ex-pat community, they were told they would have had to live in the Outback for a couple of years; they knew what that was and thought No Way. The US wanted to make them wait a year before they got their green cards. Canada - just three months. That was their choice, and I'm glad they made it their choice.

Unfortunately, a lot of migrants fleeing the wars in Iraq and Syria don't have the luxury of a choice, or time. Notwithstanding any "safe third country" agreement that the EU states have amongst themselves, the refugees want to head to the wealthiest and most generous member states - Germany, France, Sweden, and Finland.

We don't need any more tragedies like the one with the cargo truck that had several dozen dead bodies in them. But there is no question we need to step up to the plate.

As I've mentioned before, Canada is quite unique among federal states in that immigration is shared between the federal and sub-national governments. (There may be a couple of others, but that's the only one I'm aware of.) Not only can provinces nominate their own regular status migrants (those with turnkey job skills), they also have a major say in how to settle refugees. (Something many states in America would only be glad to have, if only to spread migrants across the country rather than in specific regions.)

I've heard all sorts of numbers being bandied about. Ten thousand, fifty, a hundred. I personally think we should go for the higher end of the band, maybe even higher than that. We're way past the point where we once said of some ethnic groups that "one is too many". We have the resources to settle them. Let's do so.

It was suggested this past week that we should screen all potential refugees. That's a given, but in a rush like we're experiencing right now it's hard to say who is who. But that doesn't mean that one bad apple should spoil the whole bunch. Besides, do you think the originating countries, or ISIS for that matter, will provide a background check to federal and provincial immigration authorities? Exactly, they won't.

But I do have the worry about creeping Nativism. This is a perennial problem. But given that nearly all of the incoming population are Muslims, I fear a huge backlash. ("They're taking our jobs; they're using our social programs; they don't have to learn English / French, etc.) Migrants don't get a free ride. They'll have to pay taxes, especially income taxes - and that will help with our often shaky finances. And they're anything but lazy. They want to work, and there are TONS of jobs just waiting to be filled here.

From a crisis can come an opportunity. This country gave my family, and so many other families, a chance. It's time to step up again. We're better together, having all sorts of people here makes us a better society, and that's all there is to it. I'll leave it up to the provinces to figure out the numbers they're each going to absorb. But it's time, and making it a political football is simply unacceptable. Surely the three leaders can come to common ground on this then leave the rest of the campaign to other issues that matter.

But maybe that's too much to ask for.

No notwithstanding clause on assisted suicide

In the three months since the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its decision on assisted suicide in Carter v. Attorney General of Canada, there has been a lot of thumb twisting about what to do. The Court gave Parliament a year to come up with something new before the law is officially taken off the books. Given a fall election, it's hard to imagine our legislators will come up with a new law in time by the deadline of February 5 of next year.

In the interim, there have been a number of groups opposed to "death with dignity" who have said the solution is simple - invoke the "notwithstanding clause" to "immunize" the law from court scrutiny.

Too simplistic, in my opinion. There are several reasons, but my opposition to that can be described in two.

First, our national history is full of egregious abuses of human rights. Think how we interned the Japanese and Italians during World War II. How Duplessis mercilessly (and totally unrepentant) persecuted Jehovah's Witnesses and trade union members. How Ontario tried to culturally genocide the francophone population of that province during World War I. And so forth.

Of course, there was no Charter of Rights at that time. The only thing that felled Duplessis, in his case, was the courts ruling he violated the rule of law - that he placed himself above the law. The other items were also rectified, but only at the cost of great embarrassment.

If the Charter of Rights had existed, all the actions above could have been "immunized" by the notwithstanding clause, and our country would have eventually become a pariah in terms of human rights. We don't want to set what would be a very dangerous precedent.

Second, a lot of the proponents of notwithstanding mistakenly believe that it is a permanent fix. It is not. It has a five year sunset clause. Which means we'd be kicking the can down the road. And given just how many people are suffering with no prospect at all of recovery, it's almost cruel that we're telling them that for the sake of expediency they can't exercise the one right able-bodied people have.

We really do need to proceed with caution on this one. But as I've mentioned before, when the rape shield law was struck down more than twenty years ago (as the Court determined it to be "void for vagueness") many women's groups advocated using the notwithstanding clause. Instead, the government took the opportunity to make the law stronger, not weaker. Every single clause of the reformed law passed muster.

Of course, we're dealing with a life and death issue here, but if we consider best practices from national and sub-national jurisdictions that have reformed their laws, we may be able to come up with something that on the one hand ensures the dignity of those who want to die when palliative care, while on the other hand guards against being bullied to commit suicide when it is not medically appropriate. And of course, we can't forget that the near unanimity of physicians will refuse to engage in such a practice, citing the ancient Hippocratic oath to "first do no harm" as well as the modern oath where doctors swear they "will not play God." In that case, what other professionals would be able to take part, and what immunities would they have if something goes wrong?

No easy answers to all that, to be sure. I don't know how to begin to make suggestions.

That said, we don't have much time. We need to get some answers as soon as possible, and hopefully with the widest possible consensus in Parliament. But using the hammer that the law is legal even though it is not legal truly would be "using a sledgehammer to squat a fruit fly".

You don't have to take income splitting. At least one guy hasn't ...

The income splitting option is not mandatory for those who qualify for it. Like any other tax credit, it's optional. Tax software will flag credits to make sure you get every loophole you're entitled to - problematic if you still do it manually. One guy in the 15%, a labour leader, was given the option by his software to opt out. And he did. Even though it cost him 1500 bucks. His reason: Health, education and welfare need the money more.

If just ten percent of those who qualify did the opt out too, the government might realize that it isn't such a smart idea - or at the very least, should be made available to working class families too.

A same sex marriage, 200 years ago

Is same sex marriage a recent phenomenon? Actually, it isn't. Let me explain.

On Tuesday, the odd legal team of David Boies and Ted Olsen (who opposed each other in the infamous Bush vs Gore debacle) will try to build on their previous victories in striking down Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, they're going for the jugular at the US Supreme Court and trying to legalize same sex marriage everywhere in America.

But for those who think this is a civil rights movement of recent vintage, it may come as a shock that the battle has been going on for more than two centuries in America. And in the early 1800s, two women actually got away with it and set the precedent. Let me explain.

In the recently published book Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachel Hope Cleves, we learn a surprising fact.

Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake used a loophole in Vermont's common-law marriage statute and lived as a married couple from 1807 to 1851. In fact, Bryant had had at least two lesbian lovers before she settled down with Drake. This is an incredibly moving and sentimental story of love at its purest by two women who were both teachers and tailors by trade, poets by hobby, and deeply religious by practice.

Remarkably, their marriage was tolerated by the community they lived in and prospered. Sadly, much of their shared correspondence was burned so we will never know the true extent of how deeply they were into each other. But the writer does specify that when Vermont formally legalized civil unions and later gay and lesbian marriage, many legislators noted Charity and Sylvia's marriage as their precedent. It was truly a surprising story for me and a delight to read.

That's right, folks, gay marriage is two hundred years old. Let's hope it becomes a permanent fixture in the States just as it is here in Canada. It doesn't bother me, and I don't can't understand why it bothers anyone.

The Senate and transgenders

To my knowledge, I have never met a transgendered person in my life. That does not mean I don't have respect or compassion for those who live the sex opposite of the one they are by birth, or for those who decide to take it to its logical conclusion and have sex reassignment surgery.

Our society has generally become accepting of gays, lesbians and bisexuals, which is a mark in this country's favour. But for some reason the same isn't always true of the transgendered. Maybe it's just fear of the unknown, a lack of understanding what is going on - or in some cases, it's outright prejudice. And sadly this has led to this section of the population being the victims of criminal acts.

It goes without saying, this is just plain wrong.

How surprising it was, then, when two years ago the House of Commons, over the objections of PMS, voted to add "gender identity" as a suspect class (or aggravating circumstance) in determining whether a convicted criminal should receive an enhanced sentence, especially for hate crimes. It's been slowly working its way through the Senate. It went through first and second readings without much fuss, although some Senators argued the law might be unconstitutional since it impeded on provincial human rights codes. A debatable point, but it certainly was one worth discussing.

Two months ago, however, the Senate Justice Committee proposed a series of amendments. Two make sense - ensuring transgendereds are not subject to cyberbullying, and broadening the definition of who is a transgendered person. Fair enough, But then the committee suggested that prisons, crisis centres, and restrooms and change rooms to be exempt from the legislation. (As I write this, I have checked Parliament's website and the amendments have not been acted upon.)

Say what?

I cannot for the life of me understand why this is being brought up. People in this group have a hard enough time dealing with the prejudice of having this orientation. Certainly they have a hard time getting access to "facilities" already. Why are the Conservative Senators making life more difficult than it already is?

This scandal only affirms my belief that Senators should be directly elected, preferably by proportional representation, to get rid of the deadwood and the idiots who want to move this country forwards and not back.

The fact is that even if the Senate accepts the amendments the bill will be tossed back to the House of Commons. There is no doubt that the House would reject them, and a conference committee (extremely rare in Canadian politics although still available as an option) would probably never agree on the wording, let alone the pith and substance. And, let's face it, there just isn't enough time until the October election.

There are only two ways out. The Senate can smarten up, reject the most odious part of the committee report, pass the bill with the palatable amendments, and send it back to the Commons where it would easily get final passage. Or the winning party this fall can reintroduce the bill as part of a series of criminal law amendments.

Has it truly come to this - that we say transgenders are part of our society, but certain restrictions apply? Ethnic groups, religions, races - they didn't accept half-measures in demanding equal treatment. Why should it any different for men who want to live as or become women, and vice versa?

Do we value women or don't we?

I haven't had much to say since the shootings on Parliament Hill back in October, but today's news that Jian Ghomeshi is facing three new charges, all from three new women who previously kept silent, is making me ask who we are as a society and why some people are allowed to get away with such reprehensible behaviour.

When the story broke last year, a reporter who had been following the story but hadn't gone anywhere tried to approach Ghomeshi to answer some simple yes or no questions. What he got instead was a cryptic answer that went along the lines of, "Toronto isn't that big of a city and I have a very long memory so be careful what you write." That line, you'd think, would demand immediate publication. Why the hold back? Was the Moxy Fruvous alumni really that powerful in show business that it got pushed back, until the showdown at 250 Front West?

A few weeks back, we got some insight into the two NDP MPs who claimed they were sexually harassed by two Liberal MPs and how there was an uproar when Justin Trudeau made the allegations public without naming the names of the alleged victims. Then we learn one of the women said she spent an evening with one of the accused, and something happened. All we know is, the woman says she didn't say yes but she didn't say no either. I don't think there is any ambiguity in the law on that one. The Criminal Code states only a yes is a yes, so we're talking sexual assault, not merely harassment.

They may be among the high profile cases, along with Bill Cosby, but generally this kind of thing gets ignored. And that's wrong. This isn't a progressive or a conservative issue, this is a matter of human rights. If a woman - or a man - is made to feel less human because of his or her sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, then it is discrimination, plain and simple.

The Old Boys Club (no offence to the graduates of Upper Canada College which is where we get the name) has to be smashed wide open. Men like me need to speak openly about it and say we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. If our daughters were treated like that, we'd scream bloody murder; so why is it okay when it happens to a colleague, we know about it, and say nothing? It's not. By being silent, we're being complicit.

But it's not enough for people to speak up. The process has to change so that a complaint is dealt with seriously by management and not done as a window dressing exercise. And where there is use of force, the police must be involved.

I may be stating the obvious, but there still seems to be a lack of common sense. It's a good thing men as well as women are finally having the conversation we so desperately need. But it has to be ongoing and it can't end while the criminal process is continuing. If people knew at the CBC and did nothing, they should be fired too - and that includes the anchor pool.

Terrorism comes home

It's been thirty years or so since there was a coordinated terrorist attack in Canada - the bombing of the Litton plant in Toronto that was making guidance systems for American cruise missiles. Since then, and especially since 9/11, we've kind of hoped and prayed that it wouldn't happen again. Well, it has.

Two days after a soldier was shot and killed and another maimed at Saint Jean sur Richelieu, Corporal Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Hamilton was shot and killed while guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa. A second shooting then happened inside Parliament, with a gunman firing in rapid succession until the Sergeant at Arms, Kevin Vickers, shot him dead. The gunman was Michael Joseph Hall, also known as Michael Zehaf - Bibeau, and it turns out that 1) his passport was revoked as he was considered a high risk traveller, and 2) the FBI also had him on their watch lists. There is a present a second shooter on the loose. Reports a shooting took place at a nearby mall are, fortunately, false.

On days like this, it's easy to jump to conclusions. I think it will be quite some time before we find out the why.

But all I want to say about this is the following. First, we cannot let fear become the new normal. We have to keep vigilant, but we can't let the fear of something make us do things we would normally do. This is the only way to stay one step ahead of the terrorists - by saying as clearly as we can we won't let them have it their way.

And second, the news that we've had two converts to Islam (or rather what they call Islam but really isn't) is undoubtedly going to cause a wave of violence against Canada's Muslims, just like after 9/11. We can't let this happen either. There is no better time than this for all peace-loving Canadians to stand united. Whatever our political views, we have to say we won't let violence overtake us either.

That's all I have to say, other than that seeing so many news crews at the Armoury here in Hamilton, just a few blocks from where I'm writing this, would be telling. Far more telling, though, are all the flowers in front of the front gate. Out of our grief can come hope for a better tomorrow. That's all we can ask for.

Kick Russia out of the Helsinki Accords

Is the Helsinki Accord of 1975 a worthless scrap of paper? Because Vladimir Putin sure seems to think it's a joke.

I was not even three years old when the declaration was signed but my father, an emigré from Croatia, understood its meaning. As a younger it was impressed on me the importance of a document that, among its provisions, was a statement of several important principles:

• The inviolability of national borders in Europe, and that border disputes could only be resolved via peaceful negotiations.
• There should be no threat of use of force from one nation to another.
• Every country had a right to its own internal affairs without interference from another.
• That there were basic human rights that all persons had that could not be violated, including free speech, a free press and due process.

There were other areas discussed, including scientific cooperation and the opening of trade between western and eastern states, but it was these main points that came to the fore. While not a binding treaty, many dissidents took Helsinki seriously and used it to fight for what they saw were inalienable rights. Eventually, they were successful.

It's notable that NATO continued to stress that they did not recognize the illegal occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union, and that Helsinki did not change this. Nor could Helsinki keep the former Yugoslavia from collapsing. When Germany reunited, it was tacitly a merger of equals but everyone knows that in actual fact the West annexed the East with the latter's consent.

It therefore seems pathetic that the West seems to be willing to let Russia get away with its games in the Ukraine. First, by illegally annexing Crimea (only five countries, including erstwhile western ally Afghanistan, have recognized Russian sovereignty). Second, by overtly arming Russian rebels in the east of Ukraine. And Putin is on record as saying he could take over all of Ukraine in just two weeks.

Helsinki was also about reducing tensions in Europe. Which it did. Merely by threatening to cut off the natural gas that heats a quarter of homes in the EU, Putin is raising the stakes.

And let's not forget, all the networks and most of the papers in Russia are government controlled or sympathetic. And that titans of industry have been imprisoned for wanting to speak the truth. Not to mention there haven't been any free elections in Russia since Boris Yeltsin resigned.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the permanent body that was established by the Helsinki framework, should be on top of this. This is the best forum, I think, to deescalate the tensions.

But Canada as a founding member as well as long time champion of the Accord (and far as I can tell has been faithful to its rules) needs to firmly put its foot down. If Russia won't call a timeout of its own to give a chance for things to calm down then perhaps it is time for the West to say that, if Russia won't play by the rules that ended communism and has helped keep the peace in Europe all this time, then perhaps it should be expelled or suspended from Helsinki. On top of current and coming sanctions, this is not a palatable option, but at stage I think it may be the only way to make Putin wake up.

Tim Horton's Farce

Am I the only one in Hamilton who's embarrassed by the Tim Horton's Field debacle? The stadium, which really never should have been built on the site of the old Ivor Wynne to begin with, was supposed to open at the end of the month. Now it won't now be ready until September, maybe not even in time for the Labour Day Classic. The only redeeming note is that it will be finished on budget, one of the few Pan American Games facilities that will meet that threshold.

For what it's worth, a lot of people in town think that Hamilton should not be in the business of selling naming rights to anything. That the Hammer should remain "pure" on this one. I'm surprised the city didn't sell the rights on the old stadium. It's not like Tim's is going to run the place or be responsible for its maintenance. That will be delightful old us taxpayers. I don't care what it's called, just as long as it has real seats and not just bleachers like the old place had. And that they start having concerts there again. Gibson and Stipley are actually very nice neighbourhoods and having people there for more than just the nine games a year would help that and other parts of the East and North Ends start to get out of their decades-long funk.

I have been way too busy to comment on the issues of the day as of late, part of it scheduling issues, so for my regular readers I apologize for the gap and appreciate your patience. I hope to pick up the commentary starting next week.

Oil spills, oil schmills

So the Cons have announced they're raising the penalty for offshore oil spills - from $161 million to $2 billion ($400 million for the actual offence, the rest for environmental damage). It's not just they're not kidding anyone. It's that they made the announcement on the East Coast where the risk is way less than a spill on the West Coast -- where tar sands oil would be headed, the higher sulphur content would mean greater damage.

If Exxon and British Petroleum were willing to pony up for damages to the Alaska and Gulf coasts, respectively, why should anyone here get off the hook for the same or worse the costs borne by the taxpayer? Corporate responsibility relies partly on governments setting tough rules, especially here when endangered and threatened species may be on the line, not to mention the livelihoods of those who make a living off the sea.

This is just another ticket to ride. The penalties have to be way stronger than this.