Goliath vs Goliath

"The current situation on the border between China and India is generally stable, and the two sides are negotiating to resolve relevant border issues."

"In this context, the words, deeds and military deployments of relevant military and political leaders should help ease the situation and increase mutual trust between the two sides, not the other way around."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin

Xi Jinping, left, and Narendra Modi had previously played up a personal bond   Getty Images

"Having so many soldiers on either side is risky when border management protocols have broken down."

"Both sides are likely to patrol the disputed border aggressively."

"A small local incident could spiral out of control with unintended consequences."

Lieutenant-General D.S. Hooda, former Northern Army commander, India

Indian troops near the border with China   Getty Images

Chinese spokesmen for the government speak reasonably and always portray the Chinese Communist Party ruling Politburo as bearing no ill intentions whatever toward any other country. Peace always uppermost in Beijing's collective mind. Conflict or creating situations that might lead to misunderstandings not their way at all. The sterling quality of 'harmony', within China itself and between the government and its international counterparts represents the goal sought by Beijing.

 

A Beijing that cannot seem to fathom that its insatiable appetite for acquiring the world's natural resources; for excelling in technological advances, achieved in part by pirating advances and formulae and technologies from other international sources which China can then self-produce with a specific Chinese flair and application in proud ownership; a China that cannot abide the thought that its neighbours have an equal right to disputed territories; or that international waters and airspace are to be shared, is one that raises the hackles of those it constantly undercuts and outmanoeuvres.

 

The two nations, restless neighbours, each with immense billion-plus populations, powerhouses of potential in science, technology and academic excellence but with opposing political systems, have long been uneasy with each other's proximity and penchant toward rivalry. Invariably, however, it is China that becomes the aggressor in its hunger for control and possession.  Last summer was a testy one for China-India relations. Border skirmishes in the Himalaya over a tentative border saw India lose control over some 300 square kilometres along the disputed mountain terrain.

 

China's intentions are oblique until they become evidently transparent. The People's Liberation Army brought in forces from Tibet to the Xinjiang Military Command, responsible for patrolling the disputed areas along the Himalayas. Fresh runway buildings, bombproof bunkers meant to house fighter jets and new airfields have appeared along the Tibetan disputed border. Long-range artillery, tanks, rocket regiments and twin-engine fighters have been added in the last few months.

 

Irrelevant to relations between the two countries. Whatever Beijing decides must be done within Chinese territory is of no business to its neighbours. All is well, the border undisturbed, there is no reason for India to leap to conclusions. Neighbours must trust one another's good intentions. The amassing of troops and arms? Negligible training exercises.

 

Indian soldiers on patrol near Leh, in the disputed frontier region of Ladakh   AFP

India, given its experiences with China both in the past and at present, thinks otherwise. It has brought in an additional 50,000 troops to the border; an obvious offensive military move against a neighbour more accustomed to acting out treacherous moves than relying on diplomatic niceties. India has moved its own troops and fighter jet squadrons to three areas along its border with China, to the point where there are now 200,000 Indian troops stationed on the border.

 

In the past, the military presence was directed toward blocking moves China might make; the present redeployment is set to give Indian commanders flexibility in options where they may attack and seize territory in China should it be seen to be necessary; a strategic ploy known as "offensive defence". Where helicopters are assigned to airlift soldiers from valley to valley, as well as artillery pieces like the M777 howitzer. These are not preparations taken lightly.

The recent diplomatic skirmishes representing military-diplomatic discussions with China have seen no progress reaching a return to the decades-old status quo so rudely interrupted by China's acquisitory challenges. The largest increase in troop levels have taken place at the northern region of Ladakh, where the two countries met in brief conflict on several occasions last year. Among India's transferred soldiers are some once involved in anti-terrorism operatons against Pakistan; newly deployed on the border.

 

 An Indian army convoy drives towards Leh, on a highway bordering China, on June 19, 2020 in Gagangir, India. As many as 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a "violent face-off" with Chinese troops on Tuesday in the Galwan Valley along the Himalayas. Chinese and Indian troops attacked each other with batons and rocks.  Photographer: Yawar Nazir/Getty Images AsiaPac

 

Henceforth, India will have greater troop numbers acclimatized to fight in the high-altitude Himalaya, reducing the number of troops stationed on India's western border with Pakistan. A fragile situation, to be sure. In the more populated area along the southern Tibetan plateau, soldiers with machine guns joined lightly armed paramilitary officers. Most of India's border forces were located in the far eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where the1962 India-China war took place, French-produced Rafale fighters armed with long-range missiles are deployed in support of the boots on the ground.

 

Bring Us Your Poor, Unskilled, Uneducated, Oppressed ...

"People from all corners of the globe have sought refuge in Canada, people who have started the next chapter of their lives here in Canada,"

"There's another reason that Canada's light shines brightly, and that is the contributions of refugees themselves in so many ways."

"We've seen refugees give back to their new communities and their countries, even during the pandemic."

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino 

A group of Central American migrants rest along the railway track on their way to the United States in Macuspana, Tabasco, Mexico March 25, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Immigration Minister Mendicino made an announcement on June 18 that Canada is proceeding with a new target number of refugees into the country of "protected persons"; refugees and asylum seekers set to be accepted for residence in Canada while their applications for acceptance are being determined. That acceptance for residence is to be extended to their families. In 2020 the number brought into Canada stood at 23,500. For 2021 that number is to rise to 45,000.

 

An estimated 50,000 haven-seekers, migrants declaring themselves 'refugees' entered Canada illegally in the space of two years between 2018 and 2019, numbers that are declining by a wide margin, but still ongoing where people who have entered the United States transit into Canada which has a far more relaxed reputation for accepting migrants' refugee claims. Many of those haven-seekers, are fleeing poverty, crime and conflict in their central American homelands, many seek out better economic prospects.

 

Many are drawn by Canada's generous social support system which they can draw on as soon as they enter Canada. And many of the migrants are unschooled, unskilled and if and when they look for employment, will only be suitable for low-skill work that will leave them in poverty, albeit with the added assistance of social welfare. Finding places for migrants to live, providing them with initial financial supports, medical care, language training, educational opportunities strains an already-strained system in Canada at all government levels.

 

In cities like Toronto where many of the refugee declarants head directly for temporary emergency housing -- already under strain to accommodate Canadians who have fallen on hard times and/or those whom the added financial strains of the COVID pandemic's upheaval of social, employment norms have sent into the ranks of the homeless -- an overburdened situation has been exacerbated by the presence of migrants. 

In Toronto 40 percent of people in homeless shelters in 2019 were refugees and asylum claimants. Refugees and asylum claimants represented 80 percent of the total families living in shelters in 2018. A 2018 study of homeless shelters in Ottawa revealed that close to 25 percent of those using the shelters were immigrants or refugees. When the viral pandemic struck, close living quarters in shelters convinced many to leave that shared housing in preference to living on the street.

The downtown cores of many cities now reflect the growing number of street people who have left crowded shelters to live in tent cities in public parks and on sidewalks. An issue of public safety has arisen in lock-step with illegal tent cities. So it defies logic and simple common sense to proudly proclaim Canada's readiness to increase by a wide margin an already large committed number of refugees to a country which has been unable to accommodate the needs of newly-entering people.

The Liberal government speaks of "irregular" entries to the country, when what they are is "illegal". There are legal entry points where people can declare themselves and where they know that entering Canada from the United States where a safe country agreement is in effect whereby the first country entered is the country where application should be made, is deliberately bypassed. In illegal entry a strange situation unfolds where the illegals declare themselves refugees and are enabled to make applications to remain in the country.

Germany stands out as the European country that distinguished itself in 2015 and 2016 in its declaration that it was prepared to accept a million refugees and migrants pouring illegally into Europe from Africa and the Middle East. Years later the German government finds itself supporting those they permitted entry to, many of whom are disproportionately involved in violent crime, according to the government's own data. A mere 50 percent of the migrants -- mostly young, single men -- are employed in Germany.

Robust social welfare systems that leave no one behind are viewed by many who have long been citizens and grew up in the system, as a last resort when living turns tough. To many others coming from countries with no notion of public welfare, state support through welfare seems attractive and well worth leaving home for. Those genuinely seek a better life and prepared to work toward it have indeed made Canada what it is, a country of immigrants.

In earlier generations those who entered Canada as immigrants and refugees, many non-skilled, without higher education levels, applied themselves to whatever employment was available. There were no social welfare programs of any note in that era. People lived in poverty and slowly improved their living situations, their children received good educations and found better employment and left poverty behind. At the present time, all manner of government programs in support of immigrants and refugees are available, and, it seems, less effort is put out for self-support by those feeling entitled to state support.

 

Police erected a tent at the Roxham Road crossing, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer informs a migrant couple about a legal border station a few kilometres away. (Charles Krupa/Associated Press)

Canada's Liberal Government in Contempt of Parliament

"There's a lot of politics going on by both the Liberals and the Conservatives but in parallel to that, there is zero doubt in my mind that there are very good reasons to protect at least some of the information here."

"It's very hard to know where the line is between government efforts to actually legitimately protect classified information, which is very real, and government attempts to protect itself against embarrassment."

"NSICOP [the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians] has done and said things that were independent, that were autonomous, and that did not make the intelligence community happy, that did not make the government happy."

"Any time you set up new institutions, there's always a process of two steps forward one step back, two steps sideways; This is multiple steps back."

Thomas Juneau, associate professor, security issues, espionage, University of Ottawa

"My understanding is that parliamentary privilege is absolute. So how to convince a judge otherwise, what would be the rationale for that is really something that is quite puzzling to me."

"I think it's dangerous if we start to play that game and try to limit access like that, using courts to limit access to documents."

Daniel Beland, director, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada

"The research community goes where the best science and opportunity is taking place."

"I think it would be short-sighted to heavily restrict research partnerships. After all, science is a global enterprise and one never knows where and when a breakthrough or major discovery can emerge."

Paul Dufour, adjunct professor, Institutute for Science, Society and Policy, University of Ottawa

"This is our future."

"Good relations with China means our future scientists and theirs will be in constant communication, visiting back and forth and trading information."

"The freer they are to do so, the better for all of us."

James Robert Brown, professor emeritus, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto

Xiangguo Qiu, her biologist husband and her students have not returned to work at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, after being escorted out in July 2019. The RCMP is still investigating a possible 'policy breach' reported by the Public Health Agency of Canada. (CBC)

 

The Parliamentary Committee of the House of Commons Canada-China relations committee had censured Iaian Stewart, President of the Public Health Agency, for having ignored their calls for documents to be presented for their scrutiny to answer the mystery of the firing of two Chinese bioscientists from the high-security Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Laboratory. Two scientists with professional links to research and scientists linked to the People's Liberation Army laboratories. 

Questions surrounding the two scientists' escort from the high-security bioresearch laboratory along with Chinese bioscience students studying in Canada and recruited by Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng to work alongside them at the Winnipeg laboratory have gone stonily unanswered. Both the President of the Public Health Agency, which oversees the Winnipeg laboratory, and the Liberal government have refused to release the requested documents. The Liberal government has now filed with the Federal Court to give legal impetus to its refusal to release the documents.

Michael Juneau-Katsuya, formerly head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Asia-Pacific section reminds that CSIS consistently gave warning of China's vast intelligence gathering network and that it poses a grave threat to Canadian intellectual property. He had commissioned a report in mid-1990 while still with the service, estimating that Canada had experienced a loss in excess of $10 billion annually as a result of economic espionage carried on by China. He criticizes the government for its lax approach in protection of Canada's science breakthroughs.

Mr.Juneau-Katsuya points to the cost associated with a 2014 cyber attack on the National Research Council, despite which Canada's cooperation with China went on unabated. "CSIS has identified a lot of threats and knows a lot about the threats, but the government does not warn its employees. The only defence is prevention. When they steal your stuff, it's too late", he said. An internal document produced in 2016 revealed that rebuilding the ransacked system would take years at an estimated cost of breach repair in the hundreds of millions. Still, the agency continued to collaborate with China.

 

One of the scientists escorted from the National Microbiology Lab last year amidst an RCMP investigation was responsible for a shipment of Ebola and Henipah virus to the Wuhan Institute of Virology four months earlier - although the Public Health Agency of Canada still maintains the two are not connected.  CBC

 

It was at the National Research Council where an Ebola vaccine was developed in 2018 alongside the Chinese Academy of Military, Medical Sciences and CanSino Biologics. China's Ministry of Science and Technology issued a joint call with the National Research Council in 2019 for proposals for collaborative industrial research and development projects. A number of additional ventures were conducted by the National Research Council, along with annual meetings with the China National Biotec Group.

A research-council employee from China who had been employed in the People's Republic's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation had conducted much of the work involved in setting up partnerships and guiding Canadian technology companies to enter the Chinese market. Council researchers had developed a cell line as a scaffolding for virus research which they provided to CanSino for use in the Chinese company's COVID-19 vaccine. That was followed by an agreement for the NRC to help in testing the vaccine and to manufacture it at an NRC facility.

By August of last year, when the CanSino vaccine candidate was prepared for shipping as per agreement to Canada, Beijing stepped in to refuse to allow the vaccine to be exported to Canada. Viewed by those knowledgeable as yet more retribution, aside from the arrest on charges of 'espionage' of two innocent Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, for the arrest in Vancouver on a warrant from the U.S. of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.

Environmental Degradation, Catastrophic Consequences

"We went running out, and we saw all the debris and the building was just gone."

"We heard a couple of people yelling, 'Help, help, please!" 

Alexis Watson, 21, Texas vacationer

 

"It's hard to explain. This doesn't happen in America. It's doesn't happen in Miami Beach. It doesn't happen in our homes. And it's very difficult to comprehend how it's possible."

"I have to tell you, when I walked past ground zero, there was row after row after row of firefighters who are literally waiting to rush into a building that could fall at any time."

Rabbi Eliot Pearlson, Temple Menorah, Bal Harbour, Miami

 

"You always hold out hope. Until we definitively know, we are trying to stay hopeful. But after seeing the video of the collapse it's increasingly difficult, because they were in that section that was pancaked in, in the first section that fell in, and then the other building fell on top of it, so it's not easy to watch."

"It was just a comment she made offhand, that's why she woke up, [his mother said that creaking noises woke her up in the building the night before the collapse], and then she wasn't able to go back to sleep afterward -- but now in hindsight, you always wonder."

"We are praying for a miracle, but at the same time trying to be as realistic about it as possible [whether he will see his mother and his grandmother again]."

"Until we definitely know, there is hope. It's just dwindling by the minute." 

Pablo Rodriguez, Surfside, Miami

This aerial photo shows part of the 12-story oceanfront Champlain Towers South Condo that collapsed early Thursday, June 24, 2021 in Surfside, Fla. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

A professor in the department of earth and environment at Florida International University produced a study in 2020, that found the building that partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida  early Thursday morning had been steadily sinking since the 1990s. The 12-story oceanfront condominium building had been built on what can be seen in hindsight was an unstable foundation. Built on what has been euphemistically called 'reclaimed wetland'. Reclaimed wetland is wetland that had been degraded and had then been restored to its natural functionality.

Wetlands have important -- vital -- environmental properties that are normally considered off limits for tampering with. They represent nature's way of helping to absorb excess moisture; with a rising ocean attributed to climate change, the wetland's critical function is to act as a protective barrier between the ocean and the land. What happened to that wetland was that it was destroyed for the purpose of 'reclamation', a spurious term, whereby infill, construction garbage and detritus and soil from elsewhere was dumped to destroy the wetland and create a building site.

Land is valuable for the construction trade in areas where demand is high for accommodation in a tourism-industry geographic area. Where moderate weather  calls out to winter-weary residents of other geographies with harsh winters, along with the prospect of beach-and-sun leisure making for a situation that adds tourism dollars from visitors from abroad, to the state coffers. Where entrepreneurs and construction companies can persuade a municipality to issue building licenses in areas that should be under environmental protection.

 

Residents of Surfside, Florida, not far from Miami Beach had a rude awakening before 2:00 a.m. on Thursday when the building they were in was shuddering, and then part of it collapsed. In the shock of the collapse, surrounded by smoke and debris, screams resounded, heard by other residents living in nearby buildings that remained intact. "It is just overwhelming to see when we opened the door and saw that the building had collapsed", one woman recounted after she was rescued from her balcony. 

The bodies of four people who were killed outright when the northeast corridor of the 12-story Champlain Towers condominium collapsed is only the beginning. An estimated 150 people are unaccounted for. In the building lived a wide mix of people, from Latin America, from the Jewish community. Unaccounted for is the sister and brother-in-law of the first lady of Paraguay. Unaccounted for are entire family units. 

 

Rescue workers look through the rubble of Champlain Towers South in the Surfside area of Miami. Photograph: Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

 

Rescuers evacuated dozens of people from the building with its 136 units. Fifty-five of the total units were entirely destroyed. A wing of the building is seen in footage captured by nearby security cameras, suddenly collapsing with an immense dust cloud erupting over the collapse. A witness spoke of seeing people trapped within, making use of their phone flashlights signalling desperately for rescue. Rescuers pulled a few people from the rubble and firefighters rescued other tenants from balconies in the part of the tower that remained standing.

"He was yelling, 'Please help me!' It was sheer panic", said Nicholas Balboa who lives right next to the condo, of a boy's hand he saw waving through the rubble, while he helped in his rescue. The building had passed inspection just one day before the collapse. Engineers were on the scene the day of the collapse 'examining' what might have caused the collapse, according to the vice mayor of Surfside. "It's a tragic day. We still have hope to be able to identify additional survivors", said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Rescuers reported initially they could hear banging and knocking within the rubble, of people desperately trying to indicate their presence, to be rescued. Later, first responders spoke of their confidence that all survivors had been rescued. "Everyone who is alive is out of the building", director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management, finally stated. "It's hard to imagine how this could happen. Buildings just don't fall down", said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett. "Unless someone literally pulls out the supports from underneath, or they get washed out, or there’s a sinkhole or something like that, because it just went down."

 

On all of Miami Beach towns are built on a barrier island, building sites that climate scientists and geologists long have given warning of the islands' instability, made up of a loose mixture of sand and mud, nature's protection for the shoreline, which cannot responsibly be developed. "These are very dynamic features. We didn’t understand that these islands actually migrate until the 1970s", explained professor emeritus of geology Orrin Pilkey. Professor Pilkey has studied sea-level rise and the coast's overdevelopment. "As sea level rises, they move back."

 

Rescue personnel work on the collapsed condo tower Friday, June 25, 2021, Photo: AP

 

The Riddle Within a Mystery Encapsulated in a Puzzle

"If her contract permitted it, that would be a scandal. If the contract didn't permit and they ignored the contract, that would be a scandal."

"If the contract didn't even turn its attention to this, that would be a scandal, too."

Mark Warner, trade lawyer, former legal director, Ontario Research and Innovation Ministry

"We cannot comment on this matter."

"The National Microbiology Laboratory has policies and processes that allow for scientific collaboration and these are reviewed periodically as part of the Science Excellence initiative to adapt them as needed."

Mark Johnson, spokesman, Public Health Agency of Canada

Xiangguo Qiu's ouster from the National Microbiology Laboratory remains cloaked in mystery and has been the subject of ongoing debate in Parliament. Photo by MCpl Vincent Carbonneau, Rideau Hall/File

The plot sickens as it thickens. That the Government of Canada is shielding documents from the Parliament of Canada that would shed light on the strange and rather awkward dismissal of two Chinese scientists long employed by Canada's topmost secret biology laboratory, biologists of distinction who had links both with the Wuhan Virology Institute and scientists working directly for the CCP's People's Liberation Army laboratories, defies logic. 

The dismissal of scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng in January following their having been escorted out of Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory a year and a half earlier along with Chinese biology students that Dr. Qiu had brought into the NML, is an event of great interest to parliamentarians and to the Canadian public. Particularly at this time of a global pandemic when a viral pathogen erupted in Wuhan, China and there are suspicions whether it was a natural event or whether the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been involved.

The head of the Winnipeg laboratory was called before Parliament and given instructions to produce documents to clarify the reason behind the scientists' escort from the laboratory and their consequential firing. Public Health Agency of Canada chief Iain Stewart adamantly, despite being reprimanded, continues to refuse to provide unredacted documents to Members of Parliament sitting on the Canada-China relations committee.

It has now been made clear that it is the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau which has instructed Mr. Stewart to refuse to surrender the documents in question. The Liberal government has filed an application to the Federal Court asking it to prohibit disclosure of the requested documents, challenging the principle of the House of Commons' supreme position to demand documents be produced regardless of privacy or national security laws.

Yet the government that has imperilled national security through its continued positions on allowing Beijing access to Canadian academic circles, corporate interests, government infiltration, scientific and technical inventions and production has filed an application requesting an order confirming the documents should remain undisclosed; the disputed material being "information which if disclosed would be injurious to international relations or national defence or national security". 

Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, a prominent virologist at the forefront of an ongoing RCMP investigation, is seen in an undated screengrab at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Laboratory. She was fired from her post in January, but officials won't say why.  Photo:  CBC

It would, in the sense that such disclosures have the potential to demonstrate the extent of this government's lax attention to securing its own intelligence, linked to that of its G7 and Five Eyes partnerships. News that Xiangguo Qiu, currently under investigation by the RCMP, is listed as an inventor on two patents filed by official agencies in China is another unsavoury revelation. As a long-time Canadian civil servant her obligation is to Canada, not China.

It is, in fact, illegal for any employee of the Microbiology Laboratory to patent anything discovered at the Lab; it is the property of the Lab and of Canada.While her escort out of the Microbiology Lab continues to shrouded in mystery, the subject of Parliamentary debate, these new revelations serve to deepen the conundrum.

One patent listing her as a co-inventor with others was filed with the Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration by China's National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, describing an 'inhibitor for Ebola virus'. Ms.Qiu had been celebrated in Canada for her work in helping to develop a treatment for Ebola. In the other patent registered by the Inspection and Quarantine Technology Centre of Fujian province a "detection method" for Marburg a hemorrhagic fever, is involved.

Just coincidentally, Dr.Qui had been involved in an unauthorized shipment of NML materials involving those same biological inventions out of the Winnipeg laboratory to the Wuhan Virology Institute. Dr.Qiu, it seems apparent, was either in violation of the inventions law or had received permission from the minister to proceed as she had, which seems unlikely, given its illegality and the strange potential decision to provide such highly classified and protected material and research to a hostile country.

It had been revealed by a journalistic investigation that Professors Qiu and Cheng had failed to pass security screening by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, somewhat after the fact. They had been known to work alongside Chinese scientists as  well as a PLA military researcher who had also been employed by the Winnipeg Laboratory. None of this inspires confidence in the Public Health Agency of Canada, nor the Government of Canada in this hugely unsavoury event.

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg where scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng worked until they were escorted out in July 2019, and finally fired in January 2021. Photo by Michel Comte/AFP via Getty Images/File

No One Asked the Opinion of Women Prisoners

Correctional Service Canada has adopted new policies for transgender inmates. (Shutterstock)

"Canada's prison system has overhauled its policies around transgender inmates and will now place offenders in a men's or women's institution based on their gender identity. Under a new Correctional Service Canada (CSC) policy, transgender inmates can be placed in an institution of their preference, 'regardless of their anatomy [sex] or gender on their identification documents, unless there are overriding health or safety concerns which cannot be resolved. The policy changes, which kicked in Dec. 27, 2017, will ensure federal offenders who identify as transgender are afforded the same protections, dignity and treatment as others, according to CSC."

• Communication products will reflect gender-inclusive language.
• Steps will be taken to ensure privacy and confidentiality of information related to an offender's gender identity ensuring it will only be shared with those directly involved with the offender's care, and only when relevant.
• CSC will use an offender's preferred name and pronoun in all oral interaction and written documentation.
• Individualized protocols will be developed for offenders who seek to be accommodated on the basis of gender identity or expression, including spiritual ceremonies, showers and toilets, frisk and strip searches, urinalysis, decontamination showers and monitoring under camera surveillance.
• Offenders may purchase authorized items from CSC catalogues for either men or women if there are no safety, health or security concerns according to the security level of their institution. Preferred clothing and personal effects will be accommodated 'to the greatest extent possible'.   CBC
  

Men who identify as women have been given special privileges that are meant to be justified as upholding their human rights; they say they are women and must be respected for that conviction as transgendered women. Criminals among the transgendered are considered to be just as needful of respect for their decisions as any other individual. Prisons -- men's prisons -- are places of violence. The incarceration of criminals, many of them imprisoned because of acts of violence, play out their psychopathy in the prison setting; there are fewer restraints and ample victims.

 

Among them, it takes no great stretch of the imagination to conjecture, the transgendered. Male prisoners are not likely to 'respect' the new gender orientation of other men sharing prison space with them. Predators are what they are, and prison life is fraught with danger. On the surface, it must have seemed like common sense to install transgendered women in women's prisons. Presumably, the women who occupy prison space in women's prisons were not consulted with respect to their opinion. And many of them are now discovering just how complicated life has become for them.

 

Transgendered women have the right to request transfer to women's prisons. Who would not, since women tend not to be violent on the whole, like men. So if the conditions in women's prisons are viewed as 'pleasant' in comparison to men's why not request a transfer? And many do. There is no requirement for these transgendered women to undergo sex reassignment surgery, nor to take hormonal drugs to diminish their testosterone.

 

Natal males are permitted entry to Canadian women's prisons. Among them have been a serial pedophile, a serial sex offender, a contract killer, a child killer and a murderer. Not quite the kind of company any incarcerated and thus vulnerably-placed woman might choose for herself. At an annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, a group ostensibly and historically involved in advocating for and assisting in improved prison conditions for women, the "Lived Experience" committee heard testimony from a former prisoner.

The woman, identified as "Kathy" spoke of the trauma she was submitted to, episodes of sexual harassment while in prison, exposed to a male-bodied pedophile whose charge history listed hundreds of girl victims. Kathy had her own personal history of sexual abuse in her formative years, like an estimated 80 percent of female prisoners. She had complained of the stalking and abuse she suffered from, to the Correctional Services of Canada who dismissed her complaints and threatened to isolate her while naming her a bigot.

In the room to hear her story were over 60 women, mostly directors of CAEFS, staffers and regional volunteers. They heard Kathy's story and sat in silence, unmoved. She left the chamber in tears. At her departure comments arose: "I'm sorry for what happened to her, but you don't need a vagina to be a woman"; "I am concerned about the transphobia in this room", among them. Uniformly, all those present agreed on the need to fully support transwomen. As the meeting adjourned, CAEFS adopted a blanket resolution of trans inclusion.

 

Supporting the transfer of any trans-identifying males from men's prisons to women's prisons, chief among them. And though a few staffers and volunteers suggested an amendment meant to exclude trans-identifying males with a known history of sexual assault, they were ignored and a solid majority passed the resolution. One of the women who had attempted to persuade the majority to include that reasonable amendment was later the recipient of icy treatment from people she was quite familiar with on a collegial basis.

"We think back to the situation for women in the 1930s when a tunnel was built between PAW [Prison for Women] and Kingston Penitentiary so that women could be carried underground to be sexually abused by male prisoners. What has changed? The tunnel is now ideological, and all it takes is a transfer", a resistance movement of some CAEFS staff and volunteers set out in a letter to the CAEFS executive director and board members.

When the executive of CAEFS responded to the letter they reaffirmed their commitment to trans inclusion, denying any reports or knowledge of any incidents of "harassment and violence" against women in prison from male-bodied transferred prisoners. An activist  resistance under the leadership of former prisoner Heather Mason published an article in womenarehuman.com, citing a May 2019 meeting with former Deputy Commissioner for Women discussing the male-transfer issue.

She had "reported that of all transfer requests from men's prisons, 50 percent were derived from sex offenders whose crimes of sexual abuse were committed as men, accounting for 20 percent of the male prison population overall." (About two percent of women prisoners have sexual crime backgrounds.) As difficult entanglements in law, justice and human rights go, gender expression rights see protection through the auspices of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

For women, on the other hand, sex-based rights to dignity and security fall under the Charter of Rights and Freedom, guaranteeing women's protection. Guaranteeing "inclusion" for natal males guarantees that women prisoners live in fear, increased risk and abuse, paying for trans inclusion through their own diminished protections from male predators posing as transwomen. Courtesy of the woke consciousness of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

While at a town hall meeting in Kingston, Ontario, PM Justin Trudeau is asked about the treatment of transgender people in the prison system.   CBC