Lorna Dueck in today’s Globe and Mail:

For more than 10 years, he [Imam Abdul Hai Patel] said, the [Islamic] council [of Imams] controlled the [polygamy] problem by instructing imams not to perform any marriage without a government licence. However, redefining marriage has given some a green light to exercise their own preferences. “I shouldn’t say this on TV because it’s not popular,” he said, “but there are currently Muslim men in Canada having more than one wife — multiple, bigamous relationships. As an Islamic marriage, this does not require registration. It can be religiously consummated. It is happening in small numbers and it was the Liberal government that opened up this debate.”

Not quite. Canada Criminal Code Section 293:

Every one who
(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into

(i) any form of polygamy, or
(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,

whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

So then, regardless of what some imams believe, gay marriage hasn’t given them any more power to solemnize polygamous relationships than they had before. What they’re doing is still illegal. People have certainly argued that gay marriage weakens the above-noted law, and I have disagreed vigorously, but that’s not the point here.

One of the most pleasing things about our new Conservative overlords is that (I assume) they would use the notwithstanding clause on any Supreme Court decision in favour of polygamy. Gay marriage is more or less a 50/50 split — 96 percent of Canadians disapprove of polygamy, at last count, and thus legalizing it would be far more egregious a slap in society’s face than legalizing gay marriage.

Ideally I’d like to see this government go further and encourage (to whatever extent it is able) the provinces to prosecute polygamists and/or the religious officials who sanctioned their relationships. British Columbia has always been squeamish about going after the residents of Bountiful on account of a potential Charter challenge, which I’ve never understood — the status quo preserves all the negative aspects of polygamy that the province ostensibly wants to eradicate, and the worst that could happen is that they’d lose. Now that we know such a loss wouldn’t simply expedite legalized polygamy through the Prime Minister’s office, the stakes have been lowered.

In today’s Guardian, Polly Toynbee demolishes the UK’s nightmarish, now substantively defeated bill against “religious hatred”. Suffice to say that what it proposed was vastly more restrictive than anything yet conceived of even in the most hyperventilationist corners of politically correct Canada. Even run through a fine paranoia filter, the potential outcome of it could eventually have amounted to a sort of multifaith theocracy.

I mean, Mr Bean was against it. How was Blair going to win that?

Put simply, there is no need to protect religions from ridicule, insult or fun-making beyond the protection all citizens should be afforded from incitement to violence. Toynbee puts it beautifully:

“Political correctness gone mad” is the Daily Mail take on all laws that protect people from discrimination but ethnic minorities and women cannot choose their physical attributes as they can choose ideas, to be tested and challenged. The bill struggles in vain to separate abuse of people’s ideas from abuse of people who hold those ideas.

That is, the bill attempted to say that abuse of people’s ideas is okay but abuse of the people who hold those ideas isn’t. This is obviously completely impracticable because, in Toynbee’s words:

…those who hold passionate religious beliefs see no difference between themselves and their creeds. Calling people’s religion a dangerous and misogynist primitive fetish feels to them like incitement to hatred.

Right — which is their problem, and it’s up to them to defend themselves in a civilized manner.

I can’t believe no one has done this before:

…this man [Arthur Boyt] is a connoisseur of roadkill flesh and among the dishes likely to be served in his kitchen are casseroles made from squashed badger, hedgehog, otter, rat, rabbit or pheasant. His recipes may in future garner a wider following because he is writing a roadkill cookery book that he hopes will rival the bestsellers of the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

Mr Boyt, 66, who used to work for the fire protection industry, has also tucked into a labrador, “which was just like a nice piece of lamb”, two lurchers, cats, a great horseshoe bat, as well as squirrels, foxes, mice, deer, pigeon and carrion. He even once brought a dead porcupine back from a holiday in Canada.

He has a weasel in the freezer but thinks that it is too smelly to eat, and he has just picked up a dead barn owl that he is keen to taste.

His favourite snack, however, is a badger sandwich. He is partial to the badger head, which he says includes four distinctive tastes; the jaw muscles, salivary glands, tongue and brains.

Questioned about how he knows which is good roadkill and which is, you know, “off”, he told BBC Five Live: “I’d wager I know a lot more about where it came from than you do about the meat you buy at the supermarket.” I cannot argue with that.

Read through the Canadian media accounts of last night’s Leafs/Panthers game and you won’t find a single mention of the quality of the refereeing. I simply cannot understand how anyone who watched that game could think anything other than the refereeing was the headline issue. This wasn’t a few missed calls and a few marginal ones — this was two men deliberately ruining a hockey game.

There was the single most extraordinary goaltender interference call I’ve ever witnessed, in which the offending player literally did not touch the goaltender and the goaltender literally did not flinch or even slightly alter his behaviour. There was a “holding” call in which the wronged party waspushed, and gently I might add, to the ice. There was an interference call in which a defenseman simply took up a position between his man and his net, said man not even attempting to get around said defenseman.

I hate the refereeing in the NHL this season as a general rule — and I say this as someone who supported the obstruction crackdown unequivocally — but this was absolutely beyond the pale. If it was an aberration, then fine. The question is whether anyone in the league considers this game and games like it a problem. If someone calls Don Koharski and Mark Joannette out, not that we’d ever know about it, then I’m happy — or no more pissed off than before, anyway. But if this game passes without official comment, then the NHL will soon have a full-blown oficiating crisis on its hands.

It is widely held that nothing will make Canadians turn off hockey. Mark my words: games like last night’s Leafs abomination will do it, and fast.

PS — Is there anyone at any level in the NHL, from Gary Bettman down to the assistant trainer ranks, who still thinks the automatic puck-over-the-glass delay of game penalty is a good idea? They’re keeping quiet, if so. There would be no shame in ditching it immediately, or at least before the playoffs. As I said the other day, it’s bound to ruin a very important game — especially if Buffalo’s involved.

Ridiculous, even for Paul Jackson:

Communist China has 1.2 million men and women in its armed forces and 600 missiles aimed at Taiwan, which it threatens to take by force and enslave as it enslaved Tibet.

For some unfathomable reason, this brutal dictatorship, which is so rich it makes multi-billion-dollar takeover bids for large western corporations, is the biggest recipient of Canada’s foreign aid dollars!

“!” indeed. There’s been no end of kvetching that China receives any of our foreign aid at all, and I’m largely sympathetic to it, but China isn’t anywhere near the biggest recipient of our foreign aid. According to the OECD, China is the seventh largest recipient of official development assistance from Canada, well behind worthy recipients such as Afghanistan and Bangladesh, as well as Liberal pet project Iraq (in second place).

…bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.

Torontonians really do need to shut up about the TTC for a little while. The past week or so has yielded an incredible collection of sniveling, and it’s all a bit much to take. The impression one gets is that Torontonian columnists and letter-writers consider the first standee on a TTC vehicle a sign of “overcrowding”, that they’d sooner be late for work than risk unintended casual contact with fellow citizens, and that their capacity to bitch about it is practically limitless.

Jacob Richler:

Actually to come clean, while I feel myself to be a part of the TTC experience because of all those hours I waste each week idling in traffic behind a streetcar stopped somewhere in the downtown core, I had not ridden the, ah, Rocket, for some years until I moved a few months back and found myself in the highly unusual position of actually having a subway stop (Spadina) a half-block down the street.

But, fully indoctrinated Torontonian that he now is, he’s a fully qualified expert:

The most obvious [solution to the TTC's general crappiness], as I’ve written several times, is to do away with or at least wind down their absurd commitment to that antiquated technology known as the streetcar, to which they mysteriously committed wholeheartedly back in 1971 decades after other cities had turned the page. By their own estimates it costs roughly double what an equivalent bus service would set us back (TTC buses cost $1,670 to run for an 18-hour day versus $2,770 for a streetcar, plus track repair).

Streetcars are much bigger than buses, of course, but that can hardly be relevant, can it? Anyway, Richler should check out the malcontents in the Star’s “Riding the TTC” and “Voices: Worst TTC Routes” features. The following bus routes are the worst: 11 (Bayview), 21 (Brimley), 41 (Keele), 52 (Lawrence West), 54 (Leaside) [sic — the Star couldn't even be bothered to check if their voices got the route numbers right], 56 (Leaside), 60 (Steeles West), 97 (Yonge), 109 (Ranee), 123 (Kipling) [sic again] and 161 (Rogers Road). The streetcars, subways and Scarborough RT are also the worst. They’re late. They bunch up. They’re no good for wheelchairs. There are no bus shelters. The drivers are rude; they don’t give people enough time to get off. No one takes their backpacks off, even when asked (which I assume these people do — they don’t specify). The buses and streetcars short turn with no warning, the drivers stop to get coffee, and the Yonge bus is unreliable (hint — take the Yonge subway). One Michel Johnson said this of the Dundas streetcar: “Taking the streetcar was such a scary and humiliating experience that I sold my house in lower Cabbagetown and moved.” I am not making that up.

Richler should talk to John Spears, who complained as follows in the Star:

At yesterday’s TTC meeting, Councillor Bill Saundercook said buses could carry more people if only the passengers would move to the back.

Councillor, the reason people don’t move to the back is because you’ve bought buses in which the rear section — that can only be reached by climbing a set of stairs — is hostile to human physiology.

Or José Lourenço, who also stated his grievances:

I have nothing against the subway system, not even its comical 1940s-style hockey nickname and slogan. It’s perfect if you live on one of the subway lines … except, well, many people don’t. Cities like New York and London have comprehensive underground service — Toronto’s is bush league.

And those are perfectly comparable cities, right?

Or Joe Fiorito:

I hate a lot of things about the TTC. I hate full-bodied ads on streetcars. I hate carrying proof of purchase on the Queen car. I especially hate short turns — that’s when a car is taken out of service at the tail end of the rush hour, leaving me in the lurch.

You can see these people on the TTC every morning. They’re the ones who gasp indignantly when someone pushes gently past them in search of empty space, and they’re most of the problem. The TTC could do with more money, more infrastructure, and new ideas, but as long as it’s Torontonians riding the rails practically no one is ever going to be happy.

Observation: This is the worst possible season for the NHL to have instituted the automatic minor penalty for shooting the puck over one’s defensive zone glass. The league has clearly given its referees a mandate to call whatever they please, no matter how ridiculous, at any time during the game, and it deliberately provided neither checks nor balances to keep it under control. If I’m too philistine to appreciate how this hasn’t made things worse (to say nothing of making things better), then fine — I’ll defer to the more cultured opinions.

The problem is, one of the chief characteristics of the Refs Can Do No Wrong school of officiating is the even-up call. They call one ridiculous penalty, and by definition the other team is owed an equally ridiculous call. Automatic, no-judgment-allowed calls like the puck-over-the-glass rule are the opposite of even-up calls — they take things completely out of the referees’ hands.

So, in the first period of tonight’s Leafs/Habs tilt, Saku Koivu ran afoul of an absurd cross-checking penalty. The referees were forced to call Sheldon Souray for accidentally shooting the puck over the glass, which gave the Leafs a two-man advantage. The Leafs scored. This is the very essence of the referees “deciding the game” (even though they had no choice on the second call). That’s something philistines like me really, really hate. But hey, it’s no big deal, right? It’s not as if a rule like this could ever decide the Stanley Cup.

PS — Will Chris Zelkovich and William Houston point out Don Cherry’s admiring (and revealing) montage of Jussi “Shootout” Jokinen’s goals in their weekly roundups of how much smarter they are than everyone on television?

Adam Radwanski’s column today lays out a strategy for the Conservatives to address same-sex marriage: essentially, do it quickly. I think it makes perfect sense. Indeed, the only way Stephen Harper could address my complaints more expeditiously would be to abandon the issue altogether, and that’s obviously not going to happen.

You’ll find an exhaustively documented list of pro- and anti-SSM MPs here, but rescinding rights is a very different thing than refusing to grant them in the first place, and I’d be shocked if SSM got repealed. Either way, it would be ideal for Harper and the Conservatives if the issue took the same place in their administration as it did in their campaign — the beginning, preceding the important stuff.

The Edmonton Sun editorializes upon our wounded soldiers returning home:

But we feel it is only right and fair to express our appreciation to an organization that went above and beyond the call of duty to help our wounded soldiers: the American military.
…
According to the Canadian Defence Department, after the suicide bomb went off, all the casualties were first transported out by a military ambulance. Soon after, they were picked up by a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter, which flew the wounded soldiers to the American military field hospital in Kandahar for immediate medical attention.

After that, our soldiers were taken to an American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, a top-notch medical facility that is the largest American hospital not located in the United States. Our soldiers received excellent care there until returning to their home here in Edmonton this week.

In short, then, one of the primary reasons our soldiers are in as good of shape as they are is because the American military went to the aid of an allied country fighting for freedom in Afghanistan.

Key word: allied. This editorial appears to presume that the wounded soldiers demanded to be taken to the nearest Canadian army hospital, only to discover to their horror that no such facility existed, and then threw themselves upon the mercy of the valiant Americans.

This is the arrangement in Afghanistan. We are allies, fighting the same war. Thanks are due, I suppose, as a matter of politeness, but this sounds to me less like “above and beyond the call of duty” than “the system working properly.” Long may it continue to do so.

Robberies and violent crime are up in England and Wales, according to Home Office crime figures. Robberies and violent crime are down in England and Wales, according to the British Crime Survey, which measures whether people believe they were victims of crime.

From the Times: [Home Secretary Charles] “Clarke asks why public doesn’t trust crime figures.”

[tumbleweed]

Says Clarke:

Despite the fact that most crime categories are falling, fear of crime is still too high and public perception is often at odds with reality. That is why we need to look again at the statistics and find out why people do not believe them.

[tumbleweed]