Interesting Tidbits

1. Feminist Gender Equality and the Federal Government

In a speech given in New York on March 17, 1997, Mary Glen, Alternate Head of the Canadian delegation to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, stated:

... In Canada we are now implementing the Federal Plan for Gender Equality, Canada's five-year plan formulated as our response to the Beijing Platform for Action. Gender-based analysts are being trained to use this new approach and it is being applied in key policy areas such as health, justice and social policy reform.

2. The Federal Liberal Party and CIDA

Hansard, October 21, 1997 at p. 917

MP Deborah Grey (Edmonton North):

... how much do you have to give to the Liberal Party to get a CIDA contract? It seems the more you give, the more you get.

Companies that get CIDA contracts are 70 times more likely to have donated money to the Liberals than other companies.

Geratec Incorporated of Quebec, a group of companies directed by former Liberal cabinet minister Marc Lalonde, has donated a whopping $80,000 to the Liberals over the past two years. The payoff is $80 million in CIDA contracts, not a bad return on your dollar.

If political donations have absolutely nothing to do with government grants, let the minister tell us why the Liberals get 70% of the contracts from CIDA.

3. Abortion - 25 years after US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade

A Statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 12, 1997:

What was once seen as an act of desperation -- the killing of one's own child -- is now fiercely defended as good and promoted as a right. Even worse, a deadly blindness has come over our land, preventing many persons of good will from recognizing the right of innocent human lives to respect, acceptance and help. Claims of privacy and an ethic of unlimited individualism have been used to undermine government's responsibility to protect life. Legalized violence has spread through our society like a cancer. The powerless of all ages are threatened.

4. Review by Phyllis Grosskurth of new book on Alfred C. Kinsey, A Public/Private Life, Globe and Mail, Dec. 13, 1997. From the review:

... Kinsey's initial foray was to experience underground gay culture. At last he had found himself and his mission. If he were to continue to feed his obsessionalism, he would need funds, and the only way Kinsey could obtain them was by convincing [Rockefeller] foundations that his intention was the objective study of all forms of sex in a wide spectrum of the American community. But to homosexuals whom he interviewed, Kinsey made no bones about his aim to change people's attitudes toward homosexuality. Using his interviewees to introduce him to other gays, he would write, "It is for them and the rest of you, not for me alone that it is worth while." He often paid many of those interviewed and sometimes volunteered to intercede with their parents for understanding.

... his final study was seriously flawed if data were weighted in favour of one group ...

5. AIDS and Heterosexuality, Globe and Mail, Dec. 13, 1997:

...Early on, homosexual activists advanced the idea that all were at risk because they feared that if AIDS was seen as afflicting only their community, the larger society would stint on money for research. The campaign was successful. ...

... But the plain fact is that not all North Americans are equally at risk. ...

... The good news is that "the risk of transmitting HIV through vaginal intercourse is near zero among healthy adults". ...

... it is difficult for HIV to be transmitted via vaginal sex, even in couples where one of the partners is known to be infected. ...

Mr. Stuart Brody in his book "Sex at Risk", stated:

... "gross exaggeration of AIDS risk to healthy, non IVDU heterosexuals is not only psychologically damaging, but also constitutes unethical behaviour on the part of many public-health officials, journalists and others."

6. AIDS and the Failure of Public Health Programs by W. André Lafrance, MD,

Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 18, 1997:

... The tragic reality is that more than 15,000 cases of the disease have so far been reported and male homosexuals account for 75 per cent of these cases. ...

... there are unmistakable indications that not only is the epidemic not being contained, but that it is raging out of control. ...

... The AIDS epidemic is a national disaster. What should be just as obvious is that the public-health approach to the AIDS epidemic followed so far in this country has been a dismal failure. ...

... The public health approach to the AIDS epidemic has until now rested almost exclusively on the concept of "risk education" and the promotion of "safer sex", the latter to be achieved by the use of a condom.

The time has come to recognize that this approach has failed miserably and that it is most unlikely to ever brings the AIDS epidemic under control.

... A better way -- and the only medically correct one -- to protect against AIDS, and against sexually transmitted diseases in general, is to encourage people to avoid, or to stop, the behaviour that puts people at risk.

7. Maurice Strong is the Executive Coordinator for reform and principal advisor to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Anna, and Senior Advisor to the President of the World Bank.

Maurice Strong Reform of the UN - Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 19, 1997.

For the second time in a decade, Canadian businessman Maurice Strong is facing a fraud and stock-manipulation court action in the United States.

Mr. Strong has been named in a consolidated class-action suit that charges he and other directors of Molten Metal Technology Inc., a Boston-area company promoting a hazardous-waste-treatment process, illegally inflated stock prices and sold personal shares at peak prices in 1996.

The company is also being probed by two US Congressional Committees for political influence peddling. ...

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