Daily Archives: March 27, 2017

The Liberal government will announce legislation next month that will legalizemarijuana in Canada by July 1, 2018.

CBC News has learned that the legislation will be announced during the week of April 10 and will broadly follow the recommendation of a federally appointed task force that was chaired by former liberal Justice Minister Anne McLellan.

Bill Blair, the former Toronto police chief who has been stickhandling the marijuana file for the government, briefed the Liberal caucus on the roll-out plan and the legislation during caucus meetings this weekend.

Bill Blair, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice, speaking at an open caucus meeting and panel discussion on the legalization of marijuana on Parliament Hill in February, 2016, has briefed the Liberal caucus on new marijuana legislation, which leaves the provinces to decide how marijuana is distributed and sold. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The federal government will be in charge of making sure the country's marijuana supply is safe and secure and Ottawa will license producers.

But the provinces will have the right to decide how the marijuana is distributed and sold. Provincial governments will also have the right to set price.

While Ottawa will set a minimum age of 18 to buy marijuana, the provinces will have the option of setting a higher age limit if they wish.

As for Canadians who want to grow their own marijuana, they will be limited to four plants per household.

Legalizing marijuana was one of the more controversial promises Justin Trudeau made as he campaigned to become prime minister.

But in their platform the Liberals said it was necessary to "legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana" in order to keep drugs "out of the hands of children, and the profits out of the hands of criminals."

The Liberals had promised to introduce legislation by the Spring of 2017. Announcing the legislationthe week of April 10 willallowthe partyto hit that deadline.

Trudeau referred again to that rough timetable a few weeks agowhen he said the legislation would be introduced before the summer. But at the same time he also warned that it wasn't yet open season for the legal sale of marijuana.

"Until we have a framework to control and regulate marijuana, the current laws apply," Trudeau said in Halifax March 1.

That warning became more concrete a week later, when police in Toronto, Vancouver and other cities carried out raids on marijuana dispensaries and charged several people with possession and trafficking, including noted pot advocates Marc and Jodie Emery.

Trudeau's promise to legalize marijuana was seen as one of the reasons for the Liberals' strong showing among youth voters in the 2015 election.

But at the NDP's leadership debate in MontrealSunday, which was focused on youth issues, several of the candidates pointed to marijuana legislation as an example of a broken Liberal promise.

"I do not believe Justin Trudeau is going to bring in the legalization of marijuana and as proof that ... we are still seeing, particularly young, Canadians being criminalized by simple possession of marijuana," said B.C. MP Peter Julian.

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Liberals to announce marijuana will be legal by July 1, 2018 - CBC.ca

BEIJING Lucifer does not follow Chinese politics. The 28-year-old musician in Beijing who chose his English name to be different doesn't read state media. He cannot name any of the standing committees of the Politburo, the seven men who steer the Chinese Communist Party, save for Xi Dada, a common nickname for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

And he doesnt know the difference between the National Peoples Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the two annual state meetings that brought Beijing to a halt over the past two weeks as the next year of policies and priorities were rubber-stamped. Collectively called the two sessions, these parades of bureaucratic power have dominated foreign news coverage of China.

To read the tea leaves of Chinas future, governments and journalists around the world are watching the top. But maybe they shouldn't be.

There are deeply worrying trends in top-level Chinese politics. Since becoming president four years ago, President Xi has consolidated power, cracked down on civil society, and stifled dissent in an alarming reversal of what observers both inside and out of China had hoped was a trend of gradual reform since the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

His government has tortured human rights lawyers, brought foreign NGOs under state supervision, and called for stricter socialist ideological education in colleges. This year's state congress confirmed that autocratic trend, with fewer dissenting votes (just 14 out of 2,838) and more references to Xi as the core of the party. By these measures, China seems to be going not forward but backward to the Mao era.

But there is another, contrasting trend that is much more promising: While the Chinese leadership is repressive, Chinese society is becoming increasingly liberal. That is especially true of the younger and urban generation, which I have been following, befriending, and writing about since I first arrived to live in Beijing in 2008, fresh out of college.

Their lives sketch a different picture: one of a population more receptive to new ideas, while firm in the conviction that Chinas interests are paramount; of a society that is steadily more progressive, as the countryside gives way to the cities; and of a generation with radically different aspirations and attitudes than those of their elders including those who happen to be running the country.

Its far more a desire for reform than for revolution, whether the goal is free speech or greater equality. And it has never been clearer that the system does not want to be reformed in a more liberal mold. But generational shifts, while slow, are inevitable.

Which means that while the repressive bureaucracy of China that we know today wont be going away anytime soon, the longer-term future may look very different.

Women's and LGBTQ rights are always a good litmus tests for social progress, and young feminist voices are growing just as the state's efforts to suppress them are, with more activism both on and offline. Despite a ruling against same-sex marriage, the fact that it even made it to the courts is telling, and there is greater youth acceptance of LGBTQ individuals, whether they are fighting for their rights or just asking for a hug.

Young Chinese are having sex earlier and marrying later, resisting their parents' urges to find a spouse in their early 20s. The 2015 China Love and Marriage Survey, conducted by Peking University and baihe.com, a leading Chinese dating website, found that for people born after 1995, the average age at which they had sex for the first time is 17.7. Thats compared with those born in the 1980s, who had their first sexual experiences on average at over 22 years old. And according to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, in 2015 nearly 14 percent of Chinese lived by themselves more than twice as many as in 1990.

More graduates are opting to start their own business, as part of a boom of entrepreneurship, rather than work in a state-owned company or bank. And more divergent views than ever are being shared on social media platforms such as Weibo (often referred to as the Chinese Twitter) and the messaging app WeChat, which has more than 650 million monthly active users even if many of those divergent views are taken down by the Chinese government. Censorship can slow the trend, but it cannot stop it.

Liberal attitudes have also been borne out in recent surveys: 60 percent of young Chinese have a favorable view of the US, compared with 35 percent of those over 50, according to Pew. A study published in February found a surprising decrease in nationalistic sentiment among young people in Beijing compared with previous years, and compared with their elders.

Another survey of Chinese students reported that 73 percent agreed that Western political systems are very appropriate for our country. That is in part a result of globalization and China's more international outlook, influencing a generation that grew up during the era of World Trade Organization membership and the Olympic Games. It is also helped by the number of Chinese students studying abroad roughly 330,000 in the US.

Above all, change is apparent at the individual level. Lucifers life trajectory would not have been possible 20 years ago. He was born Li Yan, in the rural outskirts of a town in Hebei province, neighboring Beijing. His father sells tractor parts, and his mother teaches primary school math.

Instead of following in their footsteps, Lucifer whose story I write about in my book Wish Lanterns came to Beijing and formed a rock band, which toured overseas and won a competition. He went on reality TV dating and talent shows. Now he runs his own cafe-bar in the hutongs near the Drum Tower, an area of central Beijing popular with young people, and is about to open a second one.

"I want to tell international friends an opinion that young Chinese have faith, energy, want to be respected, and hope to progress, said Lucifer. I hope foreigners can discover young Chinese are thinking progressively and looking upward."

Xi Jinping's vision for China is not likely to thaw for the next six years of his term, but more meaningful change is happening far away from the two sessions, which some young Chinese netizens have dubbed the stupid sessions a pun in Mandarin where another word for two has a slang meaning of dumb.

That's why Lucifer doesn't follow China's top-level politics not because he doesn't care about the future of China, but because in the long term it is being shaped from the bottom up, not from the top down.

The outcome of this societal shift is impossible to predict, but is likely to be a nation less suspicious of the Wests intentions than the current leadership is, and more open to different ideologies than the socialism which the party preaches but does not practice.

Indeed, changing social attitudes is the very reason the state is so alarmingly brazen in stifling its own population. As novelist and dissident Murong Xuecun put it to me, "The strict censorship is because people's thinking is more Western and open, due to the booming of the internet from 2000 to today." He is pessimistic about today's grim political realities, but also said that "more people think there will be change."

That shift is much more noticeable in Chinas bigger cities than in the countryside or lower-tier cities, where traditional values still prevail. The lower classes have more reason to protest the status quo than those in higher rungs who benefit from it, while the middle classes prefer not to rock the boat. Above all it is generational, in that the conservative old guard including those in power tends to be, well, older.

Mao Zedong framed the revolutionary struggle as being between the old and the new; a key component of the Cultural Revolution was called "break the four olds" (customs, culture, habits, ideas). A more ancient Chinese saying holds, "Breathe out the old, breathe in the new."

Now it is again the younger generations in China that are waiting for their elders to step aside and give them a go at the reins.

This means that while the current state of US-China relations is defined in part by a clash of nationalism at the top, that may not be true when the next generation of Chinese comes into power. It will take longer than the yearly cycle of politics, but the change led by society and youth in China will be more lasting.

Alec Ash is a writer in Beijing. He is the author of Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China, following the lives of six young Chinese.

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How the rise of a liberal, social mediasavvy generation is changing Chinese society - Vox

New York Times

Break Up the Liberal City New York Times This great-already sentiment has been reproduced in many elite quarters, and last week the Niskanen Center's Will Wilkinson, writing in The Washington Post, brought it to a particularly sharp point: What's really great about America is its big, booming ...

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Break Up the Liberal City - New York Times

When opposition MPs used procedural tactics to delay last Wednesdays budget for half an hour, it was the parliamentary way of jumping up and down and screaming to get attention. They did it because they want people to notice that the Liberal government might be trying to take away the tools they use to scream for attention.

The nitty-gritty details of the workings of Parliament are eye-glazingly dull, so most people quite rightly ignore them most of the time. But this is one occasion when Canadians should keep watch. The Liberal government has signalled they want to change the rules, extensively, quickly, and possibly without the consent of the other political parties in the House of Commons.

This is no small thing: Its the way laws are made, governments scrutinized, and how much time and capacity will be given over to dissent, or to highlighting mistakes governments make. It is the rush, and the suggestion the Liberals will act unilaterally, that has the oppositions backs up.

When Stephen Harpers Conservative government changed election laws unilaterally with its Fair Elections Act, the Liberals and NDP screamed. Now the Liberals appear intent on changing Parliaments rules in a matter of months.

How would the Liberals have reacted if Mr. Harper had done this? NDP House Leader Murray Rankin asked Friday.

The this in question is changing the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, the written rules of procedure. Parliamentary rules can be arcane, and there are things that could be updated: The Liberals proposals include some things opposition MPs might eventually support, like electronic voting. The Liberals insist its just a discussion paper but then Liberal MP Scott Simms proposed that a committee report by June 2 on which proposals should be adopted.

Theres a reason to be careful about fixing the Standing Orders. They allow the Commons to more or less work so the majority can pass legislation but the minority have an opportunity to question and point to things they think are wrong often in inconvenient ways, like Wednesdays move to delay the budget.

Theres always a tension. And young governments like Mr. Trudeaus, now 17 months old, get frustrated. The rules give the government most of the power to decide when things will be debated, but the opposition can slow the progress to passage of legislation it doesnt like. Majority governments can force bills to votes, using procedures like time allocation or closure to curtail debate, but they dont like to do it too often, because then they are accused of dictatorial behaviour the Liberals and NDP called Mr. Harper an autocrat when he used those methods.

The Liberals dont want to use those blunt instruments,. And they also promised to make Parliament less about partisan squabbles. So theyve put forward proposals to make the Commons more efficient, including programming, where the Commons sets aside time in advance for debate on each bill.

But its the majority, usually the government, that gets the final say on programming. The opposition fears that that, along with other proposals like eliminating filibusters at committees, would diminish their main parliamentary tool: procedures they can use to occasionally jump up and down and scream for attention. Once in a while, if you have to pull the fire alarm, you want the fire alarm to be there, Mr. Rankin said.

Of course, governments find that annoying. The Liberal government wants to adopt its agenda. Mr. Trudeaus government has a lot of folks focused on policy and politics, but few influential advisors who care deeply about the eye-glazing work of Parliament. Such sages might have warned that seeking rapid changes in Parliaments rules wont lower partisanship, and will create a precedent that might one day be turned on the Liberals.

The Liberals once had such wise heads: the late Jerry Yanover, the partys parliamentary expert, advised government and opposition leaders for decades on outwitting the other side with tactics and when it was unwise to try. Once, when Paul Martin was in power, he confided that he wasnt sure his advice would be taken. Sometimes governments are like teenagers, he said. Theyre physically large, so they think theyre smart, too.

When it comes to reforming the rules, the Liberals should act with more maturity. And on this occasion, Canadians should keep watch on how they do things in Parliament.

Follow Campbell Clark on Twitter: @camrclark

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Hidden dangers lie in Liberals' proposed parliamentary rule changes - The Globe and Mail

Toronto Sun

Liberal words don't intend to deceive, they just do Toronto Sun Superclusters. We can't describe them. Don't know how to make them. But whatever they are, last week's budget says they'll solve Canada's economic problems. Last year, your Liberals believed infrastructure was our economic cure-all. But, you see ...

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Liberal words don't intend to deceive, they just do - Toronto Sun

E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post 5:01 p.m. PT March 26, 2017

E.J. Dionne Jr.(Photo: The Washington Post)

I really miss liberal Republicans. People like Mitt Romney.

No doubt the former Massachusetts governor would be aghast at being called such a thing. Of course Romney is not a liberal in any conventional sense. But 11 years ago it now seems like a lifetimeRomney acted in the great tradition of liberal Republicans. He saw a problem and tried to solve it in the most business-friendly way possible. The result was the Massachusetts health care plan.

At a celebration for the new law, as recounted in a 2011 New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza, Romney tried to explain why his approach was in line with his partys history. Its a Republican way of reforming the market, he declared. Because, let me tell you, having 30 million people in this country without health insurance and having those people show up when they get sick, and expect someone else to pay, thats a Democratic approach.

More Dionne: Read other columns by E.J. Dionne Jr.

A bit demagogic? Sure, especially when one of the politicians who helped Romney pass his bill was the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, for whom universal health coverage was the cause of his political life.

But Romneys definition of a plausible path for his party on health care was compelling. The Republican approach is to say, You know what? Everybody should have insurance. They should pay what they can afford to pay. If they need help, we will be there to help them, but no more free ride.

Yes, requiring everyone to buy health insurance on the private market and providing adequate subsidies so lower-income citizens could afford it really was a conservative idea. It was an alternative to liberal calls for a single-payer approach that would have the federal government take over the health care system.

The mandate was seen not as oppressive, but as an endorsement of personal responsibility. If you can be required to buy car insurance (because everybody is at risk of getting into an accident), why not require people to buy health insurance (because everybody is at risk of getting sick)? But since health coverage is financially out of reach for so many, the fair thing is to ask them to pay what they can and have government fill in the rest.

The debacle that is Trumpcare, aka Ryancareboth President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan own this thingis a reminder that conservatism has gone haywire. Romney looks like a liberal because conservative Republicans (with a few honorable dissenters) have largely abandoned trying to solve social problems, except for offering free-market bromides as if they are solutions.

Even Romney usually played down the greatest achievement of his governorship when he ran for president in 2012 because President Obama had the nerve to learn from the Massachusetts experience: The Affordable Care Act is rooted in the principles and policies of Romneycare. This was awkward for a Republican presidential candidate because repealing Obamacare had become GOP dogma. So, like a repentant heretic, Romney dutifully bowed to the new orthodoxy.

We already know that any promise Trump makes is meaningless (my colleague Eugene Robinson memorably observed, He even lies about his own lies), but its worth remembering that Trump has consistently tried to cast himself as more 2006 Romney than 2017 Ryan. Were going to have insurance for everybody, Trump told The Washington Post in January. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you cant pay for it, you dont get it. Thats not going to happen with us.

Actually, that is exactly what happened when Trump found himself issuing ultimatums on behalf of a bill that deprives an estimated 24 million Americans of health coverage (while cutting taxes on the affluent). Thus has Trump betrayed the working-class supporters he hides behind while pursuing the interests of his rich friendsas well as his own.

The United States is the only wealthy democracy in the world that doesnt provide health coverage to all its people. Republicans used to recognize this as a problem. Now, their ideology forces them to pretend it doesnt exist.

In his definitive piece on Romneycare, Lizza noted that in the hardcover edition of Romneys book No Apology, he had said of his health plan: We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country. Lizza observed that in the paperback, that line had been deleted.

Many in the GOP seem ready to edit out part of its conscience. The Trump/Ryan health care bill crashed on Friday because at least some Republicans refused to acquiesce in desecrating their partys tradition.

E.J. Dionnes email address is ejdionne@washpost.com.

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Republicans must renew compassionate liberal streak - The Desert Sun

NewsBusters (blog)

Liberal Media Narratives from JFK to Obama and Trump NewsBusters (blog) In fact the White interview of the grieving former First Lady published under the title For President Kennedy: An Epilogue was what media-savvy Americans today would recognize as what might be called the granddaddy of liberal media narratives.

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Liberal Media Narratives from JFK to Obama and Trump - NewsBusters (blog)

It would be easy to become despondent in the face of the relentless attack on the media and on facts that confront us these days. But there is reason to be hopeful.

McKenzie Murray, a senior at Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington, explained why, despite the troubling patterns she sees, shes optimistic about the future. Her essay detailing her perspective which won the Washington Consortium for the Liberal Arts 2017 High School Liberal Arts Essay Contest makes it clear that she understands the nature of the problems were facing.

Politically, were in the midst of some of the most divisive times my generation has ever seen. And as discourse surrounding policy devolves, and people realize that they can capitalize on confusion and fear, a completely new challenge has suddenly been added to our high school experience--the proliferation of fake news on our social media feeds.

She also understands the consequences of the problem. Our democracy cant function without trust between the citizens, our policymakers, and the writers that keep us in touch with one another. Undermining the media is a tactic to silence civilian dissent and cover up gross ethical violations by some of the most powerful people in our nation.

Why, then, is she optimistic? Simply put, she sees a solution to the virulence that is putting some of our most cherished social values at risk.

The antidote to this silencing is a liberal education--an education that spans disciplines and emphasizes critical thinking. The liberal arts give us a voice, and a framework for understanding and discussing our world. Literature and philosophy allow us to look at the idea of a post-truth society and call it what it is--Orwellian, and a violation of our most basic civil liberties. Social studies allow us to look at when this has happened before, and what people did about it. Studying English and language fosters the kind of reasoning and judgment skills that we need to stay informed citizens. Mathematics and the sciences assist us in critical thinking, and seeing the logical underpinnings beneath hazy rhetoric and false claims.

McKenzie recognizes the power the liberal arts has to shape the qualities needed for students to become active citizens. She appreciates the fact that no one discipline or approach is enough to solve our most pressing problems. And as she notes, a broadly based liberal education, can create important habits of thinking: It fosters a kind of vital curiositya desire to understand life and humanity and to constantly keep learning.

She is confident that her generation will embrace this sort of education and that by doing so members of her cohort will learn the kind of critical thinking, truth-seeking, and commitment to respect and unity that we will need to practice throughout our entire lives.

I find McKenzies optimism to be contagious. If high school students like her are able to clearly define some of our most troubling problems and to recognize the type of education needed to craft solutions, there is good reason to be hopeful. Perhaps this next generation will be less divisive and more skeptical, more willing to recognize the difference between opinions and facts, than the current one. If so, they will likely create a more rational and more just world while supporting the full stretch of human knowledge from the sciences to the arts.

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Democracy and the Liberal Arts: A Student's Perspective - Huffington Post