Media Objectivity in Canada: a Timeline of Social Events

Without an informed civil society there can be no robust conversations in a renewed democracy.

“(A) democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to (Commager, Henry Steele).”

Citations from Hackett and Zhao’s useful publication (1998 ) entitled Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity ¹

The regime of objectivity refers to an “ensemble of ideals, assumptions, practices and institutions” that is tied to concepts of democracy, public responsibility, public life and public good. There is an assumption that interest groups, social movements, politicians and the media operate under a regime of objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998:1).

Mass media has become the leading institution of that realm of social life called the public sphere, “where the exchange of information and views on questions of common concern can take place so that public opinion can be formed (Hackett and Zhao 1998:1).”

Liberal-democratic capitalist mode of governance is the dominant mode of governance in Canada. Quebec has a stronger history of advocacy and participant journalism (Hackett and Zhao 1998:12).

“These recent shifts in media ownership and policy might be seen as the equivalent of a non-violent coup d’etat, a metaphor evoking the inherent link between media power and state power — between the colonization of the popular imagination and the allocation of social resources through public policy and market relations. Communications scholar Herbert Schiller suggests that what is at stake is “packaged consciousness”: the intensified appropriation of the national symbolic environment by a “few corporate juggernauts in the consciousness business.”" (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5)

“The late French social theorists Michel Foucault, during the 1970s, wrote of “discursive regimes” — of how power is imbricated with knowledge, not by directly imposing censorship or coercion from outside, but indirectly and internally, through the criteria and practices that “govern” the production of statements (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6)”

“Scott Lash’s concept of “regimes of significance” is composed of a cultural economy and a specific mode of signification. A cultural economy is comprised “of relations and institutions by which cultural objects are produced and consumed.” Mode of signification is a “typical way by which cultural objects become meaningful to those use them.” “Lash and other theorists make distinctions between discursive and figural, modernist and postmodernist, and cognitive and aesthetic ways of seeing and knowing (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6).”

Foucault collapses all truth claims into power, self-interest and the internal validity rules of particular discourses (Hackett and Zhao 1998:7)

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication,” subject to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek “predicted that the Charter’s freedom of expression clause could be used “to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests,” thus helping the private press “to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion.47″ In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens (Hackett and Zhao 1998:80). “Subsequent court rulings seem to bear out this prediction. Because freedom of the press includes the freedom to be biased, the print media (by contrast with broadcasting) are not legally required to be objective or balanced. Nevertheless, these concepts are often viewed as professionalistic criteria to be respected and relied upon in court decisions protecting media owners’ property rights. Canadian or U.S. citizens have sometimes sought court-ordered access for their opinions or rebuttals in the pages of newspapers or magazines. The courts have consistently refused such a right of reply or access, citing the integrity and responsibility of journalists in producing “balanced” and “objective” reports. “

Market liberalism describes the right-wing movement that upholds a faith in the market mechanism. “It advocates minimum government, deregulation, privatization of public services, and more economic freedoms for the private sector. It espouses an extreme version of individualism. It displays hostility towards unions, collective bargaining, and the progressive social movements that struggle for economic and social rights for various disadvantaged groups. Market liberalism is also called neoliberal, neoconservative, and the new right. Preston Manning, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Newt Gingrich are champions of market liberalism. It is basically a revolt of the rich — the upper middle class — in a crusade against the poor. It is presented as a commonsense revolution. The shift towards market liberalism began in 1980 (Hackett and Zhao 1998:151).

Canadian press has media blind spots. This includes “…tax breaks for the wealthy, Canada’s cosy trade-and-aid relations with regimes, such as Indonesia, that violate human rights and Canada’s substantial participation in the international arm’s trade, contrary to its self-image as a peacekeeper (Hackett and Zhao 1998:182).”

“In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC’s cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry’s fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998:182).”

Timeline

1700s Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine were pioneers of social thought of the Enlightenment. Reason can control nature. All men have natural rights. Rousseau described nature as God’s creation. Rousseau described nature as rational, benign and inherently harmonious.

1700s Thomas Jefferson was one of the early promoters of democracy.

1835 A jury acquitted editor/politician Joseph Howe accused of criticizing the authorities. The law of seditious libel was effectively struck down (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).

1800s The press was both partisan and sectarian. It did not present the news with honesty or accuracy (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).

1815 – 1836 The English working class used newspapers as a vital way of contributing to an unfolding class consciousness (Hackett and Zhao 1998:27).

1800s Independent penny press papers were published heralding the age of independent, non-partisan and socially responsible journalism. (Hackett 1998:16)

British Stamp Duty is a government tax on newspaper sales.

1800s The labour press began to publish. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:16) The labour press described a social landscape in which the rights to justice, equality and property of artisans, mechanics, trades people were impeded (Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).

1800s Utilitarianism advocated the goal of the greatest good of the greatest number instead of democracy based on natural rights and reason. Utilitarianism was better accepted by the ruling order, the middle class. They were concerned that democracy would lead to mob rule (Hackett and Zhao 1998:19) Utilitarianism and democracy are held in a long-standing tension in the United States.

1820s – 1830s Craft unions developed in some Canadian cities (Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).

1830s United States entrepreneurs launched daily newspapers in the 1830s. The popular commercial daily papers took full bloom in the 1870s (Hackett and Zhao 1998:24).

1850 – 1867 “Both the Leader and the Globe in their views of democracy expressed the central position of mid-Victorian liberalism. Both declared for a wide, popular electorate but still wanted a qualified franchise to recognize property and intelligence, and to prevent the rule of ignorance and mere numbers…. There was in this mid-century Canadian press little of the spirit of American Jeffersonian or Jacksonian democracy with their faith in the natural worth of the common man.”

1850s – 1900 The trade union movement developed in Canada.

late 1800s The popular commercial daily papers emerged as the first version of journalistic objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998:18).

late 1800s Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism foreshadowed the competitive, exploitative laissez-faire market economy. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:18).

1872 The Ontario Workman was founded. The labour newspaper expressed Enlightenment sentiments: “Co-operation is a principal that has shone upon the world through the progress of intelligence, and that it will gradually grow with the intelligence of the masses we have no doubt. It, or some like system, will gradually supersede the serf system of the past(Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).”

1880s The US founded Knights of Labor was spreading across Canada (Hackett and Zhao 1998:28).

1891 T. P. Thompson was Canada’s most prominent labour journalist. He was forced to close his newspaper when his readers turned to the commercial dailies. “It is much to be regretted that the wage earners are so stupidly blind to their own interests that they cannot see the advantage of having a live outspoken journal to plead their cause (Hackett and Zhao 1998:28).”

1917 The Russian Revolution

1920 Walter Lippman and Charles Merza accused The New York Times of reporting the Russian Revolution by “seeing not what was, but what men wished to see (Hackett and Zhao 1998:40).”

1930s Great Depression

1935 Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary Triumph of the Will celebrated the Nazi Regime. It is the classic propaganda film.

1935 The American Newspaper Guild’s code of ethics upheld the value of objectivity: “The newspapermen’s first duty is to give the public accurate and unbiased news reports (Hackett and Zhao 1998:40).”

1937 Quebec’s “authoritarian premier, Maurice Duplessis introduced the Padlock Act to shut down what it considered to be “Bolshevik or communistic” publications. The Supreme Court overturned the Padlock Act in 1957 (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79).”

1950s Alberta’s Conservative Premier Ralph Klein described the 1950s as a Golden Age when Canadians “looked to the newspapers for their information, and … to governments for answers.” Klein and many others were convinced that in the 1950s “The news simply reported on “reality,” and political journalism treated politicians and authority figures with enough respect that they could communicate with their publics without worrying about the distorting lenses of the media (Hackett and Zhao 1998:136).” This cognitive certitude was pervasive. It existed in academia as well.

1960s Conservative think tanks, business, politicians and media scholars describe the 1960s news media as left-liberal and anti-authority. A new breed of journalists was branded as adversarial, “gotcha”, disruptive and cynical (Hackett and Zhao 1998:136).

1960 A French language CBC journalist complained that the CBC reporting was “objective to the point of being virginal (Hackett and Zhao 1998:39).”

1960s Third world national liberation struggle.

1970 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis. 450 activists, journalists and writers were arrested under suspicion of being sympathetic to the separatist movement (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79).

1970s “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police placed left-wing groups and periodicals under surveillance (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79).”

1970 “The Davey Commission sparks debate on media ownership vs. freedom of the press (CBC Radio 1970).”

1971 Ben Bagdikian predicted that “more independent channels of communication to each information corporation and into each home will end the homogenizing of news that now occurs because it must be prepared for such a wide spectrum of consumers” (Bagdikian 1971, 20).

1973 A bloody military coup, with U.S. connivance, overthrew Chile’s elected Marxist president Salvador Allende…. The new military regime unleashed a reign of terror that saw thousands of Chileans arrested, tortured, murdered, and/or exiled. Political parties were banned, the press was censored, and freedoms of speech and assembly were restricted. The junta pursued decidedly free-enterprise economic policies, but it took sixteen years for some semblance of liberal democracy to be restored (Hackett and Zhao 1998:166).”

1974 The Fraser Institute was established. The Fraser Institute is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.

1978 The Business Council on National Issues was established. The Business Council on National Issues is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.

1980 Canada’s competition law watchdog sparked a federal inquiry into a corporate takeover of two newspapers companies (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5).

1980 – 1981 The Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers reported that “The great majority [of Canadians] believe that newspapers and the mass media in general, have responsibilities to the public different from those of other businesses.” The mass media is expected to function in public interest, not just economic self-interest. (Hackett 1998:1) “It is those newspapers with a large advertising market to protect and with a readership all social classes of society that have taken the initiative of setting up existing press councils…. The various press councils established in Canada until now are seeking to perpetuate the social consensus which has ensured the success of the so-called omnibus newspapers …. Whose formula is specifically designed towards advertising led consumer patterns and whose basic unit is the traditional family (Hackett and Zhao 1998:92).”

1982 Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication,” subject to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek “predicted that the Charter’s freedom of expression clause could be used “to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests,” thus helping the private press “to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion.” In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:80).

1983 REAL Women organization was created.

1984 Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada.

1984 Robert Hackett wrote an article in 1984 on the limitations of using objectivity and bias as evaluative standards for journalism. He worked with Newswatch Canada (then called Project Censored Canada) that covers blind spots in the media.

1988 Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada.

1989 Yuezhi Zhao’s 1989 MA thesis was on the discourse and politics of objectivity in North American journalism. Zhao grew up in a peasant family in rural China.

1992 Barry Mullin’s column criticized his own paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, for its coverage of the Los Angeles riots. The continent’s major news story was carried on the back pages while front page carried soft stories. Mullin had been an ombudsman for the Winnipeg Free Press. But the new Thomson appointed publisher disagreed with Mullin’s level of independence (Hackett and Zhao 1998:93).

1994 The response of the Mexican government to the Chiapas rebellion may have been more moderate because of the Zapatistas’ use of the Internet to communicate with their sympathizers world wide (Hackett and Zhao 1998:191)

1995 Sovereignty Referendum in Quebec

1995 “In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: “In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC’s cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry’s fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998;182).”

1995 – 1996 There were unprecedented multibillion-dollar-mergers in North American media.

1996 The US Congress passed The Telecommunications Act that “raised the ceiling on the size of national TV networks and virtually removed restrictions on the ownership of different types of media in the same market (Hackett and Zhao 1998:4).”

1996 Hollinger took over Southam, Canada’s largest newspaper chain.

Late 1990s The Federal Government cut the CBC budget dramatically. CBC cut its workforce by a third.

2000 The Sarejevo Commitment At the beginning of the 21st Century men and women of the media register their commitment to integrity and public service. This document was launched at a World Media Assembly, SARAJEVO 2000, and signed by participants on 30 September 2000.

We, men and women of the media – professionals at all levels, from publishers and producers to cub reporters and students of journalism; from the print and digital media, television and radio, book publishing, cinema and theatre, advertising and public relations, music and the performing and creative arts – met here in the bruised, historic and beautiful city of Sarajevo, pay our homage and respect to the millions of humanity whom we inform, entertain and educate.

2001 In the wake of 9/11 there was a dramatic increase in the number of blogs.

2001 The producers of the series West Wing created a pivotal episode entitled Isaac and Ishmael where real, virtual and everyday embodied real were inextricably linked. The series exists in the liminal space occupied by docudrama, fictionalized journalism, news as fiction, psychodrama, realpolitical analysands, flesh and blood real and the imaginary real. The series reveals behind-the-scenes ethical sell-offs of the fictional (or nearly real) political epicentre of the planet. The Democratic President capable of blinking has a real world Ivy League CV . He is an economist trained in the London School of Economics.

2006 in An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Al Gore described how the mass media provides misinformation about consensus in the scientific community regarding climate change 2004 showed. He contrasts the findings of 928 Science magazine survey of all peer-reviewed scientific studies of climate change in which there were no articles questioning the fact that global warming caused by increased carbon dioxide in the earth’s environment is occurring at a rate and speed greater than any climate event in the past. Concurrently 53 percent of articles, etc in the mass media articles concluded that there is conflicting and/or inadequate evidence regarding global warming. Until Gore’s film was released consumers of the mass media who relied solely on them for information regarding climate change received deliberate misinformation preventing them from responding democratically to environmental risks.

2008 Guardian journalist Nick Davies published Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media in which he critically examined the changing face of journalism in the UK since the 1970s. This reporter with a distinguished record in investigative journalism claims that “the British newspaper industry, its regulators and the PR machine that supplies it” accept, report and spread “lies, distortions and propaganda” in a culture of “churnalism” not objective, investigative reporting (Riddell 2008). “Il documente les règles permettant à n’importe quel rédacteur d’usiner une « information » sans chair, sans risque et parfois sans vérité — mais respectueuse des principes du marketing : privilégier les enquêtes au rabais, éviter de froisser les institutions, se porter au devant des désirs supposés du lecteur, alimenter la panique morale… (Davies 2008-07).” He revealed how the public has come to accept misinformation (the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) as it is so widely spread by a mass media culture in which fewer journalists are hired and those that remain are discouraged from taking the time to verify the credibility of sources.

Webliography and Bibliography

Bagdikian, Ben H. 1971. The Information Machines: Their Impact on Men and the Media. New York: Harper & Row.

Bagdikian, Ben H. 1997. The Media Monopoly. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Barlow, Maude; Winter, James. 1997. The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black. Toronto: Stoddart.

Bird; Roger?; Winter, James. 1998. “The End of News: How the News Is Being Swamped by Information, Manipulation and Entertainment. And How This is a Threat to Open, Democratic Society.” Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 23(4). January 1. Available: http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=493.

CBC Radio. 1970. “How free is Canada’s press?” March 23, 1970.

CBC. 2007. “Media Ownership in Canada: a timeline.”

Chomsky, Noam. 1989. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Toronto: CBC Enterprises.

Davies, Nick. 2008. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus.

Davies, Nick. 2008-07. “Qui veut en finir avec le modèle de la BBC: L’émotion n’existe pas? Alors, inventez-la!” Le monde diplomatique.

Franklin, Ursula. 1990. The Real World of Technology. Concord, ON: Anansi.

Grant, George. 1969. Technology and Empire. Concord, ON: Anansi.

Hackett, Robert. 1991. News and Dissent: The Press and the Politics of Peace in Canada. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Hackett, Robert; Gilsdorf, Bill; Savage; Philip. 1992. “News Balance Rhetoric: The Fraser Institute’s Political Appropriation of Content Analysis.” Canadian Journal of Communication. 17:1: 15-36.

Hackett, Robert A.; Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond Press Inc.

Hackett, Robert A.; Gruneau, Richard. 2000. The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives/Garamond Press Inc.

Hallin, Daniel. 1989. The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Herman, Edward, and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.

Herman, Edward, and Robert McChesney. 1997. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism. London, UK: Cassell.

Kellner, Douglas. 1992. The Persian Gulf TV War. San Francisco, CA: Westview Press.

Ligaya, Armina. 2007. “Media monopoly: Media consolidation: Can Aussie model stop the moguls? CBC News in Depth. September 19.

McQuaig, Linda. 1995. Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. Toronto: Viking.

Menzies, Heather. 1996. Whose Brave New World? The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between The Lines.

Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. New York: Penguin.

Riddell, Mary. 2008-02-03. “Failures of the Fourth Estate: Flat Earth News by Nick Davies turns the spotlight on the workings of the press.” The Observer.

Silva, Edward. 1995. More Perishable than Lettuce or Tomatoes: Labour Law Reform and Toronto’s Newspapers. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.

Tichenor, Phil. 1970s.

Winter, James. 1996. Democracy’s Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

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Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2002-. “Media Objectivity: a Timeline of Social Events¹.” >> Speechless.

Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “Media Objectivity: a Timeline of Social Events ¹.” >>”Google Docs. November 29. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_362fxcz5h

^{[1.] This is a personal teaching learning and research tool using my EndNote 8 and Zotero bibliographic databases compiled over a 14-year period, current events articles from various on-line and print sources. It is available for use under the Creative Commons license which is a license requiring any one who uses copyrighted work to attribute the work to its author, to not use the work commercially, to share any derivative work with the same license as this. For the sake of expediency I am uploading a timeline I developed in 2002. The vast majority of the entries come from a provocative, extremely concise, well-written publication by Hackett and Zhao (1998). For anyone teaching urban studies, critical ethnography, sociology, anthropology, economics, human rights, communications, public policy, history, political science not to mention journalism, this book is a must. It is entirely readable and its logic is impeccable. This has been uploaded in December 2006 to my WordPress blog and it will be updated in slow world time. Last updated July 2008.}

^{I began this particular timeline while teaching First Nations and Inuit adult students in Off-Campus programs. One of the first questions asked of me during an information session on course content was put forward by the grandson of Jessie Oonark. The life and times of Jessie Oonark (1906-1983) Inuit artist, Order of Canada, Royal Canadian Academy member has been a part of my everyday life since the early 1990s I first began to investigate how understanding of her deceptively simple but content-rich work could be enhanced. By the time I met her daughter, a colleague teaching at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, Nunavut, had dinner at the Frobisher Inn in Iqaluit, NU with her son, cultural activist, father, political worker, William Noah in Iqaluit and her nephew, I was already confused, ashamed and angered by the stories of social injustice that I had collected. Her progeniture asked me, “Will we be examining the way the mass media portrays Inuit?”}

Canadian child poverty, income inequality and other inconvenient truths

Key words

Absolute measure of poverty is the standard used by the U.S. If a family can afford a modicum level of food, clothing and shelter they are not considered poor. The U.S.A. is the only OECD country that uses an absolute measure of poverty in order to capture how social inequality impacts the well-being of children (UNICEF. Child Poverty in Rich Nations. Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1, June 2000.)

Lebenslage is a concept “defining child well-being by the scope given for the development of each child’s interests and capabilities”. Austria, France and Germany are using Lebenslage as part of their efforts to develop multi-dimensional indicators of the well-being of children.

LICO Statistic Canada’s Low Income Cut Off. Although Canada does not have a measure of poverty the LICO is the most accepted. LICO measures the number of families who are below the low-income cut-off (LICO), which means those who spend 20 percentage points more of their gross income on food, shelter and clothing than the average Canadian. This figure is often used as the unofficial “poverty line.”The Fraser Institute’s social-policy director Fred McMahon claims the LICO is too broad. McMahon promotes the absolute measure of poverty as used in the USA.

LIM Statistics Canada’s Low-Income Measure is a purely relative measure of “poverty” which is calculated each year from taxfiler information. The LIM is equal to onehalf of the median income of Canadian families, adjusted for family size and composition. Statistics Canada advises that the LIM produces a slightly more conservative estimate of “poverty” in a large urban area like Toronto, compared to the LICO, because of Toronto’s higher cost of living. This means that fewer households will be counted as being in “poverty” using the LIM (UWGT 2007:39).

Poverty line: “In the absence of an official poverty line in Canada, Campaign 2000 ascribes to the position held by most Canadian social policy organizations studying the issue and by UNICEF. UNICEF uses a relative measure of poverty to describe those whose material, cultural and social resources are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life where they live (Rothman 2000).”

Relative measure of poverty, defined as households with income below 50 per cent of the national median. It is noteworthy that all OECD countries, except the U.S., use a relative measure of poverty in order to capture how social inequality impacts the well-being of children. UNICEF has sided with a relative approach to understanding poverty and has described the plight of children in industrial societies as the “twilight world in which . . . physical needs may be minimally catered for, but . . . painfully excluded from the activities and advantages that are considered normal by their peers.” (UNICEF. Child Poverty in Rich Nations. Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1, June 2000.) “In recent years, relative child poverty has become a key indicator for the governments of many OECD countries. The European Union’s efforts to monitor its Social Inclusion Programme, for example, include relative child poverty and the percentage of children in workless families as the only indicators specifically related to children (drawing the poverty line as the proportion of children in each country living in households with an equivalent income of less than 60% of the median for that country) (http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf).

Who’s Who

Atkinson, A. B. is an economist who wrote Macroeconomics and the Social Dimension which informed part of the “Child Poverty in Rich Nations” Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1, June 2000.

Campaign 2000 “is a cross-Canada public education movement to build Canadian awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. Campaign 2000 began in 1991 out of concern about the lack of government progress in addressing child poverty. Campaign 2000 is non-partisan in urging all Canadian elected officials to keep their promise to Canada’s children (Campaign 2000 ).” Campaign 2000 puts out an annual national Report Card on Child Poverty in Canada measuring the progress, or lack of progress, of the 1989 unanimous all-party resolution. Campaign 2000 Discussion Papers (including our most recent policy paper called Pathways to Progress) contain a set of proposals for public policies and social investments based on the life cycle approach to addressing child poverty. Its 2007 Report Card on Child & Family Poverty in Canada was financially supported by the Family Service Association of Toronto and United Way of Greater Toronto. Their impressive list of partners include a few in Alberta: Public Interest Alberta, Edmonton Social Planning Council, Jewish Family Service (Calgary). There is no partner in Nunavut.

CCPA Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Armine Yalnizyan is an economist and research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

C.D. Howe Institute “John Richards, an economist and professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, says this good fortune signals that anti-poverty initiatives implemented during the last decade are working. His report for the C.D. Howe Institute is entitled Reducing Poverty: What has worked, and what should come next.”

Wellesley Institute in Toronto: “Michael Shapcott, a long-time poverty activist and policy analyst at the Wellesley Institute in Toronto, says the big flaw Richards is making is the assumption that all the people who are off welfare are now gainfully employed (Ligaya 2007).”

EU-SILC European Union Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. “Since 2004, the 25 countries of the European Union (EU) have been developing a new statistical data source, EU-SILC which “aims to become the reference source of comparative statistics on income distribution and living conditions within the EU. A primary purpose of EU-SILC is to monitor the common indicators (the so-called Laeken Indicators) by which the EU has agreed to measure its progress towards reducing poverty and social exclusion. EU-SILC therefore replaces the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) which was the main source of such data from 1994 until 2001 (for the then 15 Member States of the EU). Designed to fill some of the acknowledged gaps and weaknesses of the ECHP, EU-SILC collects every year comparable and up-to-date cross-sectional data on income, poverty, social exclusion and other aspects of living conditions – as well as longitudinal data on income and on a limited set of non-monetary indicators of social exclusion. The first EU-SILC data for all 25 Member States of the current EU, plus Norway and Iceland, should be available by the end of 2006. The first 4-year longitudinal data on ‘those at-persistent-risk-of-poverty’ will be available by the beginning of 2010. In addition to populating these core indicators, each round of EU-SILC also gathers data on one particular theme – beginning in 2005 with data on the intergenerational transmission of poverty.” (http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf. For more see (Marlier, Atkinson, Cantillon and Nolan 2006.)

Fraser Institute. Fred McMahon

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Innocenti Report Cards investigate child well-being in rich nations. The series draws data from the 29 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the countries that produce two-thirds of the world’s goods and services. The OECD member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America. “All families in OECD countries today are aware that childhood is being reshaped by forces whose mainspring is not necessarily the best interests of the child. At the same time, a wide public in the OECD countries is becoming ever more aware that many of the corrosive social problems affecting the quality of life have their genesis in the changing ecology of childhood. Many therefore feel that it is time to attempt to re-gain a degree of understanding, control and direction over what is happening to our children in their most vital, vulnerable years. That process begins with measurement and monitoring. And it is as a contribution to that process that the Innocenti Research Centre has published this initial attempt at a multi-dimensional overview of child well-being in the countries of the OECD.” (UNICEF. Child Poverty in Rich Nations. Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1, June 2000.)

OECD PISA Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, located in Florence, Italy, was established in 1988 to strengthen the research capability of the United Nations Children’s Fund and to amplify its voice as an advocate for children worldwide. The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre studies how such poverty can best be defined, measured, and reduced. The Innocenti Research Centre provides an in-depth annual report on child poverty. In 2007 the “report builds and expands upon the analyses of Report Card No. 6 which considered relative income poverty affecting children and policies to mitigate it. Report Card 7 provides a pioneering, comprehensive picture of child well being through the consideration of six dimensions: material well-being, health and safety, education, family and peer relationships, subjective well-being, behaviours and lifestyles informed by the Convention on the rights of the child and relevant academic literature.” UNICEF. 2007. “Report Card on Child Well-being in Rich Countries.”

WHO HBSC World Health Organization’s survey of Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) http://www.hbsc.org/index.html

Timeline

1950 [In 2000] despite a doubling and redoubling of national incomes in most nations since 1950, a significant percentage of their children are still living in families so materially poor that normal health and growth are at risk. And as the tables show, a far larger proportion remain in the twilight world of relative poverty; their physical needs may be minimally catered for, but they are painfully excluded from the activities and advantages that are considered normal by their peers (UNICEF. 2001. Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1.).”

1980 The number of Canadians living under the low-income cut-off after taxes was 11.6 per cent in 1980, according to Statistics Canada, far lower than the 1996 peak of 15.7 per cent (Yalnizyan cited in Ligaya 2007). “In 1980, the disparity between the top income-earning category and the lowest was $83,000, according to Statistics Canada. By 2005, that gap had reached $105,400 (Shapcott cited in Ligaya 2007).”

1981-82 Canada experienced a transformational recession for the labour market and it took the country about eight years to climb out of the rut (Yalnizyan cited in Ligaya 2007).

1988 The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, located in Florence, Italy, was established in 1988 to strengthen the research capability of the United Nations Children’s Fund and to amplify its voice as an advocate for children worldwide.

1989-11-24 The child poverty rate in Canada was 11.7%. On November 24, 1989, the House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution to seek to achieve “the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000 (Campaign 2000 ).”

1991 Canada experienced a transformational recession for the labour market and began emerging from that only in 1997 (Yalnizyan cited in Ligaya 2007).

1990s “The growth in the number of low-income families in the City of Toronto in the 1990s was alarming, soaring from 41,670 at the start of the 1990s to 84,750 by the decade’s end. The factors that contributed to this change are well known – the deep recession in the early 1990s, corporate downsizing, the rise in precarious employment, decreased access to Employment Insurance, reduced welfare payments, and the barriers that skilled immigrants faced finding work for which they were qualified (UWGT 2007:40).“

1995-2005 The national Irish government set firm targets, created timetables and reported annually so the public could easily see progress being made against poverty. In this way they reduced poverty from 15 per cent to 6.8 per cent (Yalnizyan in Monsebraaten and Daly 2007).

1996 The number of Canadians living under the low-income cut-off after taxes was 11.6 per cent in 1980, according to Statistics Canada, far lower than the 1996 peak of 15.7 per cent (Yalnizyan cited in Ligaya 2007).

2000-06-01 Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1. The first Innocenti Report Card presents the most comprehensive analysis to date of child poverty in the nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Whether measured by relative or absolute poverty, the top six places in the child poverty league are occupied by the same six nations – all of which combine a high degree of economic development with a reasonable degree of equity” In the league table of relative child poverty, the bottom seven places are occupied by the Canada (15.5%), Ireland (16.8%), Turkey, United Kingdom, Italy, the United States (22.4%), and Mexico (26.2%). In the league table of absolute child poverty, the bottom four places are occupied by Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.” “The countries with the lowest child poverty rates allocate the highest proportions of GNP to social expenditures (Figure 8). Differences in tax and social expenditure policies mean that some nations reduce ‘market child poverty’ by as much as 20 percentage points and others by as little as 5 percentage points (Figure 9).”

2000 Table 1. shows the percentage of children living in ‘relative’ poverty, defined as households with income below 50 per cent of the national median. Using this standard of relative poverty countries at the bottom of the list included Canada (15.5%), Ireland (16.8%), Turkey, UK, Italy, USA (22.4), Mexico (26.2%), . Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1. http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard1e.pdf

2000-12-05 The editorial in the Toronto Star dealt with child poverty in Canada.

2000-12-06 A letter entitled “No surplus for kids” by Pedro Barata, the Ontario Coordinator of Campaign 2000, was published in the Toronto Star. Barata asked, “Why is it that Ontario was one of only two provinces where since 1996 poor families fell deeper below the poverty line?” or, “Why does Ontario have the highest monthly fees for child care in Canada?”

2000 Almost 1 in 5 children still living in poverty in Ontario

2000-11-24 The National Post published an editorial dismissing Campaign 2000’s Annual National Report Card on Child Poverty in Canada (Rothman 2000). Nov. 24

2000-12 Laurel Rothman, the National Coordinator of Campaign 2000 wrote a Letter to the Editor entitled “Richer, poorer” to the National Post in response to their editorial dismissing Campaign 2000’s annual report card (Rothman 2000).

2001-05 The National Council on Welfare using the LICO claimed that 5 million Canadians are living in poverty.

2002 Quebec introduced anti-poverty legislation. The “Province of Quebec and Ireland have tackled poverty head on, with impressive results that show poverty reduction can be achieved against planned goals (UWGT 2007:73).“

2004 Since 2004, the 25 countries of the European Union (EU) have been developing a new statistical data source, known as Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). EU-SILC aims to become the reference source of comparative statistics on income distribution and living conditions within the EU. A primary purpose of EU-SILC is to monitor the common indicators (the so-called Laeken Indicators) by which the EU has agreed to measure its progress towards reducingpoverty and social exclusion. EU-SILC therefore replaces the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) which was the main source of such data from 1994 until 2001 (for the then 15 Member States of the EU). Designed to fill some of the acknowledged gaps and weaknesses of the ECHP, EU-SILC collects every year comparable and up-to-date cross-sectional data on income, poverty, social exclusion and other aspects of living conditions – as well as longitudinal data on income and on a limited set of non-monetary indicators of social exclusion. The first EU-SILC data for all 25 Member States of the current EU, plus Norway and Iceland, should be available by the end of 2006. The first 4-year longitudinal data on ‘those at-persistent-risk-of-poverty’ will be available by the beginning of 2010. In addition to populating these core indicators, each round of EU-SILC also gathers data on one particular theme – beginning in 2005 with data on the intergenerational transmission of poverty (http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf.

2005 According to Stats Canada the disparity between the top income-earning category and the lowest was $105,400 (Shapcott cited in Ligaya 2007). Statistics Canada income figures showed 788,000 children were living in poverty in 2005, a rate of 11.7 per cent.

2005 41 per cent of all low-income children lived in families in Canada where at least one parent had a full-time job (Campion-Smith 2007).

2006 Newfoundland announced a strategy to become the province with the lowest poverty rate by 2016.

2006 20,900 Canadian children used food banks, double the number in 1989.

2006-11-24 CBC news summarized details from the Campaign 2000 (2006) National Annual Report on Child Poverty with the headlines “Aboriginal children are poorest in country: report: B.C. and Newfoundland have highest rates; Alberta and P.E.I. have lowest rates.” November 24, 2006. One aboriginal child in eight is disabled, double the rate of all children in Canada; Among First Nations children, 43 per cent lack basic dental care; Overcrowding among First Nations families is double the rate of that for all Canadian families; Mould contaminates almost half of all First Nations households; Almost half of aboriginal children under 15 years old residing in urban areas live with a single parent; Close to 100 First Nations communities must boil their water; Of all off-reserve aboriginal children, 40 per cent live in poverty. See http://www.campaign2000.ca/rc/rc06/06_C2000NationalReportCard.pdf

2007-03 The Ontario Child Benefit, announced in the March 2007 Ontario Budget, pledged $2.1 billion over the first five years to help low-income families support their children (UWGT 2007:73).

2007-04 Ontario’s provincial budget “put poverty reduction on the agenda with a new Ontario child benefit for all children in low-income families – not just those on welfare. And it outlined a plan for raising the minimum wage to $10.25 by 2010, from $8 today (Monsebraaten and Daly 2007).”

2007-05 A study by economist Yalnizyan was released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, showing a widening income gap in Ontario. “40 per cent of Ontario families have seen no gain in real income – and often a loss – compared with their predecessors 30 years ago. The richest 10 per cent, meanwhile, have seen their incomes soar. And even though Ontario parents are better educated, they spend more time working than the previous generation did, the study says (Monsebraaten and Daly 2007).”

2007-05-09 The former Ontario premier Bob Rae was one of four panellists at at the Toronto Star-sponsored forum on the growing income gap held at the St. Lawrence Centre and attended by 250. Rae argued that, “We now have to restore and renew our commitment to help people in difficult times [to invest] in affordable housing, child care and education” [. . .] Rae noted that Canada is the only government in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that doesn’t have a national housing policy, and that’s reflected in the country’s poverty figures. Economist Yalnizyan, research director of the Toronto Social Planning Council remarked that “Income inequality is the second inconvenient truth in our society. [G]overnments need to act now – not only to tackle poverty, but to ensure everyone is benefiting from a healthy economy (Monsebraaten and Daly 2007).” Stop picking away at the edges of poverty, say forum speakers, and take a leaf from Ireland’s comprehensive plan (Monsebraaten and Daly 2007).” .

2007 The child poverty rate in Canada was still 11.7%. Canada experienced a 50% real increase in the size of its economy from 1989 to 2007.

2007 In 2007 Report Card on Child Well-being in Rich Countries: The most comprehensive assessment to date of the lives and well-being of children and adolescents in the economically advanced nations. builds and expands upon the analyses of Report Card No. 6 which considered relative income poverty affecting children and policies to mitigate it. Report Card 7 provides a pioneering, comprehensive picture of child well being through the consideration of six dimensions: material well-being, health and safety, education, family and peer relationships, subjective well-being, behaviours and lifestyles informed by the Convention on the rights of the child and relevant academic literature.” UNICEF. 2007. “Report Card on Child Well-being in Rich Countries.”2007-11-12 Ligaya, Armina. 2007. “The debate over Canada’s poverty line.” CBC News On-line. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/economy/poverty-line.html November 12. “[C]hild poverty numbers have not budged at all since 1989 when Canadian parliamentarians stood up and promised to do their best to eradicate it within a decade. Even today, 11.7 per cent of children under 18 are living below the low-income cut-off line.” There are now record numbers of tenants being evicted from their homes and a rising dependency on food banks (Shapcott cited in Ligaya 2007).

2007 “Jean Swanson, co-ordinator of the Carnegie Centre Action project in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said restricting access to employment insurance and welfare only punishes the poor. The poverty activist said she has watched Canada’s homeless epidemic multiply what she says is 10-fold over the last decade (Ligaya 2007).”

2007-11-26 Campaign 2000 released their national annual report card on poverty in Canada entitled “It Takes a Nation to Raise a Generation: 2007 Report Card on Child & Family Poverty in Canada.” Despite a growing economy, soaring dollar and low employment, 788,000 children (1/8 of Canadian children) live in poverty. Ontario remains the “child poverty capital,” with 345,000 children living in impoverished conditions.

2007-11-26 Almost 30 per cent of Toronto families – approximately 93,000 households raising children – live in poverty, compared with 16 per cent in 1990. [The Mercer annual Cost of Living Survey of 143 major cities around the world measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods, and entertainment. In 2006, Toronto was ranked as the most expensive city in Canada, just slightly ahead of Vancouver.] Since 2000, the city has seen a net loss of jobs, many of them well-paying and unionized, while elsewhere job creation is on the rise. At the same time jobs have been replaced by temporary, part-time and contract work that offer no job security, benefits or eligibility for employment insurance. As a result, an alarming number of households are in deep financial trouble as seen by an increase in the number of evictions, family debt and bankruptcies since 2000, a year when the crippling recession of the 1990s had clearly eased in the rest of the country, the report says. From 1999 to 2006, landlord applications for eviction due to nonpayment of rent climbed from 19,795 to more than 25,000. Also, the number of people receiving credit counselling in Toronto has almost doubled in the past six years to an average of 4,534 per month. Not surprisingly, the number of moneylending outlets has increased almost eightfold since 1995 to more than 300, largely concentrated in the low-income neighbourhoods. United Way of Greater Toronto. 2007. Losing Ground: The Persistent Growth of Family Poverty in Canada’s Largest City, (Monsebraaten and Daly 2007-11-26 ).

Bibliography and Webliography

Atkinson, A. B. Macroeconomics and the Social Dimension.

Barata, Pedro. 2000. “No surplus for kids.” Letter of the Day. Toronto Star. December 6. http://www.campaign2000.ca/res/per/nosurplus.html

Bradshaw, J. and Mayhew, E. (eds.) 2005. The well-being of children in the UK, Save the Children, London.

Campaign 2000. 2006. “Oh Canada! Too Many Children in Poverty for Too Long.”

Campaign 2000. 2007. “It Takes a Nation to Raise a Generation: 2007 Report Card on Child & Family Poverty in Canada.”

Campion-Smith, Bruce. 2007. “Ontario leads in child poverty.” Feature on Poverty. Toronto Star. November 26.

CBC. 2006. “Aboriginal children are poorest in country: report: B.C. and Newfoundland have highest rates; Alberta and P.E.I. have lowest rates.” November 24, 2006.

CBC. 2007. “Child poverty rates unchanged in nearly 2 decades: report.” November 26.

Ligaya, Armina. 2007. “The debate over Canada’s poverty line.” CBC News On-line. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/economy/poverty-line.html November 12.

Marlier, E.; Atkinson, A.B.; Cantillon, B.; Nolan,B. 2006. The EU and social inclusion: Facing the challenges, Policy Press, Bristol.

McMahon. Fred. 2000. “The true measure of poverty.” Op-Ed. Peterborough Examiner on ?

Monsebraaten, Laurie; Daly, Rita. 2007. “In search of a poverty strategy.” Toronto Star. May 09.

Monsebraaten, Laurie; Daly, Rita. 2007. “Toronto families slip into poverty.” Toronto Star. November 26.

Richards, John. Reducing Poverty: What has worked, and what should come next.

Rothman, Laurel. 2000. “Richer, poorer.” Letter to the Editor. National Post. Toronto. December.

Rothman, Laurel; Shillington, Richard. 2000. “A place for every child: building an inclusive society.” Peterborough Examiner. December 7.

UNICEF. 2001. Innocenti Report Card. Issue No. 1.

UNICEF. 2007. “Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries: The most comprehensive assessment to date of the lives and well-being of children and adolescents in the economically advanced nations.” Innocenti Report Card 7, 2007. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence. http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf

United Way of Greater Toronto. 2007. Losing Ground: The Persistent Growth of Family Poverty in Canada’s Largest City,

It’s not politically attractive but more reason, less fear needed in developing criminal law

In a widely read article¹ Montreal Law Professor Dumont (2001) wrote, “How can our criminal laws better reflect the public’s concern for safety, while promoting their desire for a democratic society based on peace, liberty, tolerance and justice? To accomplish this goal, legislators and the Canadian public as a whole, should try to apply more reason than fear in developing criminal law infrastructure for safety. They must recognize the symbolic and political power of criminal laws, and determine the effectiveness of each punitive measure in terms of securing personal and public safety. Finally, legislators must always choose the solutions that will result in a peaceful, free, tolerant, and just society (Dumont 2001 ).”

The Canadian public supports mandatory sentences more as a way of denouncing crime than deterring it. Two out of three Canadians support mandatory minimum penalties even if research showed they would not reduce the likelihood of re-offence and 74 per cent of Canadians think sentencing is too lenient (Crutcher, Roberts, Verbrugge 2007).

In May 2006 the Canadian Minister of Justice talked about tackling crime and restoring confidence in the justice system. Law professor Peter Rosenthal questioned the degree to which harsher penalties were being promoted out of political interest in response to popular opinion and lacking in evidence-based research (SCJHR 2006).

“The most conclusive study on mandatory minimum sentences was conducted for the Solicitor General of Canada, by Mr. Crutcher and Mr. Tabor. These studies are very clear: mandatory minimum sentences do not act as deterrent, nor do they have an incidence when it comes to reoffending. There is no doubt about this. There is a whole host of studies demonstrating that they do not work. This bill is ideologically based and attempts to give a false sense of security (Réal Ménard to the SCJHR 2006:34).”

Keywords: sociology, justice and human rights, public policy, evidence-based, social exclusion, at-risk to social exclusion, criminology, tough-on-crime, anti-crime, media and crime reporting, aboriginals and crime, mental illness, mandatory minimum sentences, political attractiveness,

Footnotes

1. The article was cited at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights (2006) as capturing LEAF’s position on Bill C-10.

Timeline

1980s “[I]n the late 1980s, the Canadian Bar Association issued a report called Locking Up Natives in Canada. One of the things they found in that report, looking at Saskatchewan, was that—and all these figures have gotten much worse—aboriginal youth in Saskatchewan are more likely to go to jail than to graduate from high school. The point was made in that report that jails were becoming our contemporary residential schools. That is certainly true [in 2006], as we see 22% of inmates in Canada being aboriginals. Those numbers are up. Every year, those numbers go up (SCJHR 2006).”

2005 There were 10 gun-related murders and 45 shootings in Jamestown, a small Toronto neighbourhood. Toronto police apprehended 106 members of the Jamestown Crew in 2006. Since then there have been no murders in Jamestown and very few shootings. [. . .T]he truly violent are a relatively small number. In Jamestown [the police] kept about 45 people in custody [in the summer of 2006] summer and the level of violent crime in that community plummeted by over 50% (SCJHR 2006:4, 8 ).

2006In May 2006 the Canadian Minister of Justice talked about tackling crime and restoring confidence in the justice system. There was question about the degree to which harsher penalties were being promoted out of political self interest in response to popular opinion (SCJHR 2006).

2006 Gun-related homicides in Canada fell by 16 per cent (CanWest 2007).

2006 22% of inmates in Canadian prisons are aboriginals.

2007 Statistics Canada’s website reported in July, 2007 that “Canada’s overall national crime rate, based on incidents reported to police, hit its lowest point in over 25 years in 2006, driven by a decline in non-violent crime. The crime rate dropped by 3%, mainly due to declines in break-ins, thefts under $5,000 and counterfeiting. The national crime rate has decreased by about 30% since peaking in 1991. The rate fell in every province and territory, with the largest drops reported in Prince Edward Island, Alberta, New Brunswick, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The total violent crime rate remained virtually unchanged from 2005, mainly due to the stability in the rate of minor assaults, which account for 6 in 10 violent crimes. The national homicide rate fell 10%, halting two years of increases. However, increases were reported in many serious violent crimes such as attempted murder, aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, robbery and kidnapping/forcible confinement. The property crime rate dropped 4% from 2005, as the rate of break-ins fell 5% to its lowest level in over 30 years. The rate of motor vehicle theft also declined, down 2%. The crime rate among young persons aged 12 to 17 rose 3% in 2006, the first increase since 2003. The rise was driven by increases in mischief and disturbing the peace. The rate of young people accused of homicide was the highest since 1961, when data were first collected. Statistics Canada bases their [. . .] In Canada, there are two primary sources of statistical information on crime: police-reported surveys and victimization surveys completed by Canadians from randomly selected households. This report is based on police-reported data released today in an annual Juristat by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS). Data on incidents that come to the attention of the police are captured and forwarded to the CCJS via the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey according to a nationally-approved set of common scoring rules, categories and definitions. UCR data are available back to 1962 for the nation, provinces and territories, and to 1991 at the census metropolitan area (CMA) level (homicide data are available back to 1981 at the CMA level (SC 2007).”

Webliography and Bibliography

CanWest News Service. 2007. “Tory crime bill a solution in search of a problem, criminologists argue.” November 23. Ottawa, Canada.

Crutcher, Nicole; Roberts, Julian V.; Verbrugge, Paul. 2007. “Public attitudes to sentencing in Canada: exploring recent findings.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Jan 01, 2007.

Online abstract: “This article reports findings from two representative public-opinion surveys that explored Canadians’ attitudes toward three important sentencing issues: the severity of sentencing; the purposes of sentencing; and mandatory sentences of imprisonment. As has been found by polls over the past 30 years, most Canadians believe that sentencing practices are too lenient. The same result emerged from a poll conducted in 2005: 74% of respondents held the view that sentencing is too lenient–a finding consistent with polls conducted throughout the 1980s. With respect to the purposes of sentencing, … (CJCCJ 2007)”

Dumont, Helene. 2001. “Disarming Canadians, and Arming them with Tolerance: Banning Firearms and Minimum Sentences to Control Violent Crime, An Essay on an Apparent Contradiction.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal. 39:2 & 3.

Dumont, Helene. 1997. “Disarming Canadians, and Arming them with Tolerance: Banning Firearms and Minimum Sentences to Control Violent Crime, An Essay on an Apparent Contradiction.” First published in French.

Doob, Anthony N.; Carla Cesaroni. 2001. “The Political Attractiveness of Mandatory Minimum Sentences.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal. 39:295.

Fekete, Jason. 2007. “Alberta draws strategy to bust crime boom.” Calgary Herald. November 11.

Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights (SCJHR). 2006. Evidence. November 23. No. 034. 1st Session of 39th Parliament of Canada. Ottawa, Canada.

Statistics Canada (SC). 2007. The Daily.

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Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “It’s not politically attractive but more reason, less fear needed in developing criminal law.” >> Google docs. November 24.Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “It’s not politically attractive but more reason, less fear needed in developing criminal law.” >> Speechless. November 24.

Democracy Renewed: Reasonable Accomodation and Differences

It is surprising that so little attention outside of Quebec is being paid to one of the most robust contemporary exercises in democracy, the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences. This commission on the social accommodation of religious and cultural minorities in Quebec, is participatory, accessible online, completely bilingual (French/English), pluridenominational and intercultural. Building on Quebec’s model of sociocultural integratation the Commission is examining issues related to managing diversity in a society committed to democratic participation and the protection of human rights. Issues discussed include relations with cultural communities, immigration, secularism with a focus on the management of religious diversity. Renowned Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, (1931-) and sociologist Gérard Bouchard will oversee the commission’s one-year mandate. The process includes gathering information from public and on-line forums.

Taylor argued that the media have promoted an image of Quebecers as exclusive by focussing on the most explosive racist and zenophobic comments. The modernate majority in Quebec are participating in the forums and are very welcoming toward immigrants and their cultures, and don’t adopt an attitude of exclusion (CBC 2007-11-16).

Footnotes

Some 88% of immigrants in Québec live in the Montréal area and account for 19% of the population (9.9% of the population of Québec). The population of Quebec is 7.6 million with 47% living in the Montréal area (GQ 2007:16).

Timeline

1948 The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted.

1960s Debate[s in Quebec "sought to redefine powers and the division of responsibility between the State and the Catholic Church (GQ 2007:6)"

1960s "Québec has ranked among the top 10 host countries of immigrants* among the OECD countries [since at least the 1960s] (GQ 2007:16). Source: United Nations, Trends in Total Migrant Stock, 1960-2000, 2003 Revision, Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2004.

1970s Quebec adopted a “sociocultural integration* model or perspective. The sociocultural integration model compelled the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences “to reexamine interculturalism,* relations with the cultural communities, immigration, secularism* and the theme of Québec’s identity as part of the Frenchspeaking countries and communities of the world. In a word, it is, in particular, the management of diversity, especially religious diversity, that appears above all to pose a problem (GQ 2007:10).”

1975 Quebec adopted its own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. “Québec’s political system is both democratic and liberal. It is democratic inasmuch as political power is vested, in the last analysis, in the hands of the people, which delegates such power to representatives who exercise it on their behalf for a given period of time. Our democracy is thus representative,* but is also liberal in that individual rights and freedoms are deemed to be fundamental and are confirmed and protected by the State (GQ 2007:12).”

1977 Quebec adopted the Charter of the French language (Bill 101), stipulating that “French [is] the language of Government and the Law as well as the normal and everyday language of work, instruction, communication, commerce and business (GQ 2007:12).”

1981 “It is generally agreed that the main thrust of Québec’s integration policy was initially defined in 1981 in “Québécois—Each and Every One” which rejected federal multiculturalism* policy in favour of a policy of “cultural convergence.” “Québécois—Each and Every One” (action plan for the cultural communities), Québec, 1981, 78 pages. To our knowledge, this action plan dating from 1981 is the first government document to sanction the notion of a “cultural community (GQ 2007:14 footnote 23).”

1982 Canada incorporated a Canadian charter of rights and freedoms into the Constitution Act.

1985 “Although it is rarely formally spelled out in legislation, accommodation is deemed to be included in the right to equality that the charters recognize. It is a mechanism that the Supreme Court of Canada, which drew inspiration from a concept already recognized in the United States, sanctioned in 1985 in order to combat indirect discrimination,* which, following the application of an institutional norm* such as a statute, rule, regulation, contract, administrative decision or customary practice, infringes a citizen’s right to equality or freedom of religion (GQ 2007:8).”

1985 “March 20, 1985 resolution of the Québec National Assembly on recognition of the rights of the aboriginal peoples (GQ 2007:11).

1989 May 30, 1989 resolution of the Québec National Assembly on the recognition of the Malecite Nation (GQ 2007:11).

1990 “The Énoncé de politique en matière d’immigration et d’intégration was adopted which proposed the notion of a “moral contract*” that establishes, in a spirit of reciprocity, specific commitments by the host society and newcomers. The integration framework proposed adopts the basic principles mentioned earlier, i.e. Québec is a liberal democracy* in which French is the common public language, and specifies the nature of the desired relationship between the host society and immigrants (GQ

2007:14) The Énoncé stipulates that Québec is: • a society in which French is the common language of public life; • a democratic society that expects and encourages all citizens to participate and contribute; • a pluralistic society, open to extensive cultural contributions within the limits imposed by respect for basic democratic values and the need for intercommunity dialogue. Source: Au Québec pour vivre ensemble. Énoncé de politique en matière d’immigration et d’intégration, ministère des Communautés culturelles et de l’Immigration, 1990, page 15. (GQ 2007:14 footnote 24).

2007-01 The municipal council in the Mauricie town of Hérouxville adopted a code of conduct for immigrants in January. Seven of the region’s 10 towns moved quickly to support the list of rules. The Muslim Congress of Canada is considering a human rights complaint against the town.

2007-02-08 On February 8 “Québec Premier Jean Charest announced the establishment of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences in response to public discontent concerning reasonable accommodation (GQ 2007:5) [T] he current debate is taking place in a unique context of pluridenominationality (GQ 2007:6).”

2007 “Almost all Western nations are facing the same challenge, that of reviewing the major codes governing life together to accommodate ethnocultural differences while respecting rights (GQ 2007:5).”

2007-11-16. CBC. 2007. “Quebec accommodation hearings are serving a ‘great need,’ co-chair says.” http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/11/16/qc-boutay1116.html

2007-11-21 CBC. 2007. “Montreal immigrants fuel debate on accommodation.” http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/11/20/qc-accommodation1120.html

Keywords used in Consultation on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences

[A]ccommodation related to cultural differences [. . .] “is based on the principle of negotiation, whether or not it is formal, between two parties, usually an individual and an organization, the first of which claims to be the victim of discrimination. Such negotiation seeks to strike a balance between each party’s rights without imposing an undue burden on the party targeted by the complaint.” [A]ccommodation practices or arrangements fall under two largely overlapping spheres, the citizen (cooperation) sphere and the legal sphere (GQ 2007:5).”

Webliography

CBC. 2007. “Quebec accommodation hearings are serving a ‘great need,’ co-chair says.” http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/11/16/qc-boutay1116.html

CBC. 2007. “Montreal immigrants fuel debate on accommodation.” http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/11/20/qc-accommodation1120.html

GQ (Gouvernement du Québec). 2007. Accomodation and Differences: Seeking Common Ground: Quebecers Speak Out: Consultation Document: Dialogue Makes a Difference. http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/documentation/document-consultation-en.pdf

Reference:

Creative Commons 2.5 2007 Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. “Democracy Renewed: Reasonable Accomodation and Differences.” >> Google Docs. November 21. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_397cwdp2w

CC 2007 Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. “Democracy Renewed: Reasonable Accomodation and Differences.” >> Speechless. November 21.

How to paint mountains: Geomorphological taxonomy

I was never attracted to the paintings of E. H. Hughes while I worked as contract art educator at the National Gallery of Canada. It wasn’t until I lived near his home for almost two years, in the Cowichan River valley area that I began to understand that his work was a highly detailed documentation of plants, trees, geological formations, waterways and marine activity — not an attempt to express the impression of the landscape from a tourist’s point-of-view. The ubiquitous greys of the island from November through March explain the colour-challenged palettes in most of Hughes’ prints. The original paintings are rare since most of them have been sold to a unique collector in Germany. But framed expensive mass-produced prints from the original paintings (which the vast majority of people in the age of Robert Bateman — and more recently high quality giclee¹ — mistake for original works of art) are prominent, particularly in the places like the family restaurant in Duncan called the Dog House.

In Canada plein art painting in cold weather is possible but uncomfortable. This small acrylic plein air sketch was painted in a couple of hours on the windy escarpment at Edelweis Point. The larger version will portray the mountains more accurately. I often find myself fantasizing about knocking on doors of stranger’s homes-with-a-view to ask for three hours of air space to paint in the off seasons. Following in the paths of plein air painters I had made up my own rules that I followed for decades. I would not paint from pictures. But I moved a lot since then. Each new Canadian region offers new visual opportunities and challenges for painting. Even the qualities of light itself, its clarity, luminosity, is different from region to region. I spent a lot of time studying the patterns of waves on the coast of Vancouver Island. Now I am confused, overwhelmed by the mountains. I want to hike their trails and see them from as many angles as is possible with easy 5-hour scrambles. These days I take digital photos on our day trips in and around Calgary to ecological reserves, public parks or even roadside in Cochrane, Canmore . . . Now I find myself painting with a laptop open beside me so that my finished painting becomes a visual tool for memory work, another way of living in and visualizing my everyday world. I also used to feel that selling mass-produced prints was dishonest and deluded an ill-informed public. Now I am just happy to have available images whatever their source or quality to compare and learn: Flickr, Google images, Virtual museums like the National Gallery of Canada’s, reproductions, etc. There aren’t any overpriced framed Giclees of specific mountain peaks from our local shopping mall galleries hanging over the sofa at home, but I will study and compare them as another way of seeing.

As I refine tags and folksonomy in the virtual world, I seek out more precise multidisciplinary taxonomies in ecosystems I inhabit. It informs the way I see, and the way that I take photographs and paint plein air. I tag my images through Google Earth, Picasa and Flickr. Adobe Photoshop provides tools that allow me to enhance or layer some images. Using www.bivouac.com, Peaks of the Canadian Rockies, and numerous other maps, images and texts I can hyperlink each mountain peak to its exact longtitude/latitude coordinates in Google Earth (and or Picasa and Flickr). In Google Earth I can link the altitude tool relative to space/ground with the height of the mountain. I can also link customized image icons and detailed information including the exact www.bivouac.com and/or Peaks of the Canadian Rockies urls. The process of social tagging or folksonomy fuels my interest in searching for the names that provide the most accurate historical, ecological, geographical information about mountain peaks, glacial erratics, medicinal plants, post-contact plants . . .

Google searches before and after help refine our understanding of the places we have visited. Public librairies, local museums and even Tim Horton’s customers provide more suggestions. Sharing using one of our many social networks is easy. Flickr provides tools for describing and commenting on details of images, adding textual information as well as refined folksonomy, geotagging and comparing photos with special interest groups. Google docs archives the unpublished notes, annotated webliographies and bibliographies and keeps track of published blogs.

In the process I learn about contributions to Alberta’s history by individuals and communities descended from First Nations, Chinese, Italians, French, Irish, British, African-Americans . . .

Of course it is a visual form of memory work. If we only relied on the printed word for knowledge claims we would find ourselves with limited perspectives provided by experts in exclusive academic disciplines who claim that their magisteria is nonoverlapping.

This is changing so rapidly in a world of integrated management. Ecohydrology combines the fields of ecological processes and hydrology that informs integrated management of watersheds. Google Earth allows nonexperts to view climatic zones, mountain ranges, massifs, river valleys, individual mountains, hillslopes, stream channels, estuaries, gullies, barchannels, recharge areas, and in some cases meter-sized features. We can fly over and zoom in on the watershed of the Athabaskan Lake and River, Fort McMurray, Fort Chipewyan. We can read related reports online and track changes ourselves. This kind of information has never been easier to collect and share.

The most accurate scientific information from legitimate sources provides exact terminologies and taxonomies² that not only clarify complex issues, they are also folksonomy-friendly.

Footnotes

1. Limited edition archival prints where the editions are limited to a hundred or less of an original work of art and hand autographed by the artist are priced accordingly and were considered to be art collectors items. Robert Bateman is well-known for his high-priced multiple edition prints of his popular wildlife paintings. These are often purchased for a hefty price by uninformed collectors who believe they have an original work of art. With progress in digital technologies, printing inks and processes, giclees from original oil paintings can be printed on canvas that appears to have a varnished finish and priced as much as a unique original painting. Giclees on high quality water colour paper do have an archival life of over a hundred years. Their production is costly so they are priced more than a mass-produced print. Giclee archival prints are a huge improvement over the prints of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr distributed to public schools in Canada in the Post World War II years. Most of these framed prints which unfortunately still hang in public places over fifty years later, have darkened and have lost all semblance to original colours.

I now fully embrace the giclee concept as a way of sharing visual information more widely. It is yet another take on Walter Banjamin’s mechanical reproduction.

2. I looked to wikipedia under geomorphology to find the equivalent of taxonomy for mountains that I have been using to identify wildflowers, medicinal plants. According to wikipedia, “Different geomorphological processes dominate at different spatial and temporal scales. To help categorize landscape scales some geomorphologists use the following taxonomy:

• 1st – Continent, ocean basin, climatic zone (~10,000,000 km²)
• 2nd – Shield, e.g. Baltic shield, or mountain range (~1,000,000 km²)
• 3rd – Isolated sea, Sahel (~100,000 km²)
• 4th – Massif, e.g. Massif Central or Group of related landforms, e.g., Weald (~10,000 km²)
• 5th – River valley, Cotswolds (~1,000 km²)
• 6th – Individual mountain or volcano, small valleys (~100 km²)
• 7th – Hillslopes, stream channels, estuary (~10 km²)
• 8th – gully, barchannel (~1 km²)
• 9th – Meter-sized features”

Creative Commons reference:

CC Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “How to paint mountains: Geomorphological taxonomy.” >> speechless. November 13.

CC Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “How to paint mountains: Geomorphological taxonomy.” >> Google docs. November 13.

NB: This article is supposed to be automatically re-published on speechless as changes are made in Google docs. I prefer to have both references available.

Nonoverlapping magisteria NOMA

The crisis of academic disciplines in the late 20th century was fuelled by the blurring of boundaries between disciplines. Social sciences and humanities were accused of physics envy as they argued for legitimacy of their truth claims, their ontologies, methodologies, epistemologies . . . More recently investigations into the axiological dimension of academic disciplines have increased. So where does this leave Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of nonoverlapping magisteria?

How much simpler our world would be if we could neatly divide complex questions into nonoverlapping categories, states into nonoverlapping topographies, identities into nonoverlapping communities and cultures.

Neither Gould or Sagan argued for simplicity. As popularizers of science their controversial work situated them in a highly visible spotlight that was not always kind.

Stephen Jay Gould argued for “a respectful, even loving concordat” between science and religion which he called the NOMA [nonoverlapping magisteria] solution. “NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world’s empirical constitution. This mutual humility has important practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions [. . .] The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven (Gould 1997).”

Paul Davies November 24, 2007 Op-Ed entitled “Taking Science on Faith” in the New York Times was one of the most emailed of the day. Davies, who is the director of Beyond, a research center at Arizona State University, and the author of Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life argued that, ””The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified (Davies 2007 ).”

To be continued . . .

Timeline of related events

1911- ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844-1921) a Persian seer from a noble family imprisoned for decades for his beliefs, upon his release from prison, spent several years travelling and lecturing in Paris, London, New York, Montreal . . . before his death in 1921. In one of his well-attended and well-documented lectures in Paris he declared, “Religion and science are the two wings upon which man’s intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism (‘Abdu’l-Bahá 1911? [1969:143]).” Citations from these lectures which were covered by major contemporary mass media are now available from many sources on the web.

1911- “When religion, shorn of its superstitions, traditions, and unintelligent dogmas, shows its conformity with science, then will there be a great unifying, cleansing force in the world which will sweep before it all wars, disagreements, discords and struggles–and then will mankind be united in the power of the Love of God (‘Abdu’l-Bahá 1911? [1969:146]).”

1922 The words of `Abdu’l-Bahá, Persian seer and central figure of the Baha’i World Faith, were published. `Abdu’l-Bahá declared that, “If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations; for the antithesis of knowledge is ignorance,and the child of ignorance is superstition. Unquestionably there must be agreement between true religion and science. If a question be found contrary to reason, faith and belief in it are impossible, and there is no outcome but wavering and vacillation.”

1936 Pontifical Academy of Sciences was founded by Roman Catholic Pope Pius XI, who wished to surround himself with a select group of scholars, relying on them to inform the Vatican in complete freedom about developments in scientific research, and thereby to assist him in his reflections (NCSE 2002 ).

1950 Pope Pius XII (not one of Gould’s favorite figures in twentieth-century history) pronounced his encyclical entitled Humani Generis in which he declared that “Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature (Gould 1997). “The Magisterium of the Church has already made pronouncements on these matters within the framework of her own competence. [. . . ] In his Encyclical Humani generis (1950), [Pope] Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points (cf. AAS 42 [1950], pp. 575-576) (NCSE 2002 )”.

1981 Pope John Paul II in his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 3 October 1981 clarified that, “Cosmogony itself speaks to us of the origins of the universe and its makeup, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationship of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth, it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The sacred book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and makeup of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven (NCSE 2002).”

1984 Stephen Jay Gould joined with a group of French and Italian Jesuit priests who were also professional scientists, participated in a meeting on nuclear winter sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He referred to conversations on evolution at that time that resulted in his 1997 essay. Carl Sagan organized and attended the Vatican meeting that introduced Stephen Jay Gould’s essay entitled “Nonoverlapping Magisteria“. Carl Sagan and Gould shared a concern for a “fruitful cooperation between the different but vital realms of science and religion (Gould 1997).”

1993 Pope John Paul II addressd the Pontifical Academy of Sciences plenary assembly on October 31, 1992. He addressed debates surrounding Galileo, drawing attention to the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences (cf. AAS 85 [1993] pp. 764-772; Address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, 23 April 1993, announcing the document on The interpretation of the Bible in the Church: AAS 86 [1994] pp. 232-243)(NCSE 2002).”

1996 Pope John Paul II clarified certain issues on the magistria of science and religion in his Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996 entitled “Magisterium is Concerned with Question of Evolution for it Involves Conception of Man.” “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world. a world in which both can flourish . . . Such bridging ministries must be nurtured and encouraged.” “[In 1996] fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory. What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology. A theory is a metascientific elaboration, distinct from the results of observation but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory’s validity depends on whether or not it can be verified, it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought. Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy. And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology. The Church’s Magisterium is directly concerned with the question of evolution, for it involves the conception of man: Revelation teaches us that he was created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:27-29). The conciliar Constitution Gaudium et spes has magnificently explained this doctrine, which is pivotal to Christian thought. It recalled that man is: the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake” (n. 24). In other terms, the human individual cannot be subordinated as a pure means or a pure instrument, either to the species or to society, he has value per se. He is a person. With his intellect and his will, he is capable of forming a relationship of communion, solidarity and self-giving with his peers. St Thomas observes that man’s likeness to God resides especially in his speculative intellect for his relationship with the object of his knowledge resembles God’s relationship with what he has created (Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1). But even more, man is called to enter into a relationship of knowledge and love with God himself, a relationship which will find its complete fulfilment beyond time, in eternity. [. . .] Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say. However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry? Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition into the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again, of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator’s plans (NCSE 2002).”

1997 Stephen Jay Gould published an entitled “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” later published in the journal Natural History in which he argued for “a respectful, even loving concordat” between science and religion which he called the NOMA [nonoverlapping magisteria] solution. “NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world’s empirical constitution. This mutual humility has important practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions [. . .] The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven (Gould 1997).”

1997 Carl Sagan’s estate published Billions & Billions. Sagan cited Pope John Paul II on the magistria of science and religion in his proclamation of October 1996. “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world. a world in which both can flourish . . . Such bridging ministries must be nurtured and encouraged.”

2007 Canadian secular philosopher and author of The Taming of Chance and honorary professor at the Collège de France, Ian Hacking, in his essay entitled “Root and Branch” published in The Nation, argued that the metaphor of a tree of life with linear roots, trunk and branches as used in genetic anthropology was inadequate. Classification, particularly in tiniest life forms such as fungi, is a mess. While his arguments against the anti-science perspective of hard Intelligent Design proponents, are convincing — and he clearly states he is atheist — he does not adopt a hard line approach such as Richard Dawkins and others whom he describes as destructive, “arrogant religion-baiters”. He provided a useful bibliography and timeline of events that led to the sociological phenomenon in the United States of widespread religious fundamentalism that informs contemporary debates on the roles of science and religion. Hacking considered Leibniz’ proposal “that the actual world is the one that combines the maximum of variety with the minimum of complexity for its fundamental laws. The “best” world, the world sought by the most intelligent designer, is one that maximizes variety in its phenomena and simplicity of basic law. Such a world has no place for a specific set of plans for the Arctic tern. The upshot is not attractive to those who favor intelligent design. It is in effect a proof that we live in a world of quantum-mechanical laws that are counterintuitive (to humans) but intrinsically simple–a world that, once these laws are in place, is then allowed to evolve out of a very few raw materials by chance and selection into unendingly complex patterns, including life on earth as we know it. It is a fact that you will get complex structures if you just let such systems run. The wisest designer would choose the governing laws and initial conditions that best capitalized on this mathematical fact. A stupid designer would have to arrange for all the intricate details (the Arctic tern again) that anti-Darwinians eulogize, but an intelligent designer would let chance and natural selection do the work. In other words, in the light of our present knowledge, we can only suppose that the most intelligent designer (I do not say there is one) would have to be a “neo-Darwinian” who achieves the extraordinary variety of living things by chance.”

Glossary of terms

magisterium (or teaching authority) derives from the concept of teaching (magister is Latin for “teacher”). Gould () refers to magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church in particular, and to the magisteria of religion and science in general.

NOMA (nonoverlapping magisteria) is a principle designated by Gould (1997) in which he argued that no conflict should exist [between science and religion because] each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority which do not overlap.

Key words, folksonomy, tags: science and religion, nonoverlapping magisteria, magisteria, See also: Morowitz: Alexander; constructs; ding an sich (thing in itself); epistemology; evolution; Immanuel Kant; Philo; transcendence

Webliography and Bibliography

‘Abdu’l-Bahá. 1922 [1982]. The Promulgation of Universal Peace. Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust. 2nd edition 1982, p. 181.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá. [1969]. Paris Talks. London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust. p. 143.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá. [1969]. Paris Talks. London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust. p. 146.

BIC (Baha’i International Community). 1999. “The Unity of Religion and Science.” >> Information about the Bahai Faith: Baha’i Topics is a service of the Baha’i International Community. http://info.bahai.org/article-1-3-2-18.html

Davies, Paul. 2007. “Taking Science on Faith.” Op-Ed New York Times. Published: November 24, 2007.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1997. “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.” Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16-22; Reprinted on-line with permission from Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, New York: Harmony Books, 1998, pp. 269-283.

Hacking, Ian. 2007. “Root and Branch.” The Nation. October 8. Uploaded September 20. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071008/hacking

Sagan, Carl. 1997. Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. New York:Random House.

For further reading:

Turbott, John. 2004. “Religion, spirituality and psychiatry: steps towards rapprochement.” Australasian Psychiatry. 12:2:145-147. Objectives: “To consider the claim that there is a fundamental epistemological conflict between religion and psychiatry over what constitutes rational explanation, and what impediment this might be to rapprochement between the two. Conclusions: An epistemological gap most certainly exists, but there is a growing acceptance of the importance of religion and spirituality to psychiatry. Rapprochement may best be achieved by increasing psychiatric awareness and knowledge of the issues, and by a willingness to embrace intellectual, cultural and religious pluralism.

Turbott, John. “Religion, spirituality and psychiatry : conceptual, cultural and personal challenges.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

Abstract: Objective: “Recent psychiatric literature and contemporary sociopolitical developments suggest a need to reconsider the place of religion and spirituality in psychiatry. This paper was written with the aim of encouraging dialogue between the often antithetical realms of religion and science. Method: Material from psychiatric, sociological and religious studies literature was reviewed, with particular emphasis on New Zealand sources. Results: Despite the secularising effects of science, the presence and influence of ‘religiosity’ remains substantial in Western culture. The literature emphasises the central importance of religion and spirituality for mental health, and the difficulty of integrating these concepts with scientific medicine. Psychiatric tradition and training may exaggerate the ‘religiosity gap’ between doctors and patients. In New Zealand, the politically mandated bicultural approach to mental health demands an understanding of Maori spirituality. Conclusions: Intellectual, moral and pragmatic arguments all suggest that psychiatry should reconsider its attitude to religion and spirituality. There are many opportunities for research in the field. Psychiatry would benefit if the vocabulary and concepts of religion and spirituality were more familiar to trainees and practitioners. Patients would find better understanding from psychiatrists, and fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue about mutual issues of ‘ultimate concern’ might ensue.”

Morowitz Harold, 2005. “The Debate between Science and Religion: Exploring Roads Less Traveled.” Zygon. 40:1:51-56(6). Blackwell Publishing.
Abstract: “The confrontation between Hellenism and Judaism goes back to the invasion of the Middle East by the armies of Alexander the Great. The differing ideologies, first rationalized by Philo of Alexandria, have emerged repeatedly for the past 2,000 years. The inability to resolve the differences can be traced to the differing epistemologies of religious fundamentalists and scientists with views that can be traced to Karl Popper, Immanuel Kant, and, ultimately, Aristotle.”

Keywords: Alexander; constructs; ding an sich (thing in itself); epistemology; evolution; Immanuel Kant; Philo; transcendence

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Harold Morowitz is professor and former director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, MS 2A1, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, and co-chairman of the Science Advisory Board at the Santa Fe Institute.

Links for this article

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/bpl/zygo/2005/00000040/00000001/art00006
http://openurl.ingenta.com/content?genre=article&issn=0591-2385&volume=40&issue=1&spage=51&epage=56
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2005.00642.x

Fernando, Suman. 2003. Cultural Diversity, Mental Health and Psychiatry: The Struggle Against Racism. Psychology Press.

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