14/08/12 12:35am It is now clear that there are further errors in this post. I will make corrections as I can.
14/08/12 01:10am Some of the hacking described and perceived as aggressive may actually have been an effort to help me, in some way, possibly. If so, then it was good, not bad.
[26/07/12 It was scary to write this, given I knew very well how odd much of it would sound, but I thought it was necessary - someone should. As I make clear throughout, it was written in good faith, and I am always willing to correct any mistakes.]
Ce qui suit est entièrement en anglais, par besoin de brièveté.
Following up on this, this and this, I need you to read this piece and to make it as widely known as possible (facebook, email, twitter, blogs, comment boards, conversation, etc.). It is an incredible but true story dealing with government, politics and the media which has immense implications for all our lives, in multiple ways. The only way I can see to try to deal with it is to go public, contrary to all my usual instincts, as anyone who knows me will know. I have to stress now, at the outset, that I have spoken to people like Alex Himelfarb, Paul Champ, James H. Taylor, Trevor Hache, and John Olthuis about different elements of this situation to make it clear that however unbelievable parts of what I am going to describe may seem (and they certainly seemed that way to me, for a long long time), it is real, or much of it is – it needs to be brought into the light to be properly examined and understood. And for various reasons, some of which elude me, it would seem that the only way this situation can be exposed is if citizens like us make it known and make it impossible to ignore. At the very least, it's out there, now. I've done what I could.
I have made public my two facebook accounts, here and here, so all my notes (often addressed to insiders) and occasional use of analogy, allegory, metaphor and misdirection to describe and analyse events may be available to all interested parties, as are my two twitter accounts, here and here.
Here are some bullet points which need to be disseminated as widely as possible, to concentrate the mind. I will then explore the situation as best I can, as I came to know it, chronologically, from the limited perspective of one individual. I am happy to admit any and all errors and apologise for and correct any mistakes – I write in good faith. Many people (mostly in politics and the media) know and understand much more than me, but since no-one else is talking about it, I will do my best. The whole point of this piece is get this situation out there so as much light can be shed as possible, so as to stop some abuses of power and find ways to make things better.
- Legal, legitimate political activity (moderate and mainstream even) – writing and talking – can lead to being placed under 24 hour, all-encompassing electronic surveillance by this Government of Canada - this has been my experience for several months now (perhaps longer, but I was made aware of it last summer, though for a long time I thought it might be something more pedestrian, like a series of individuals taping and hacking me…and even that was hard to conceive).
- As I understand it, this surveillance is only possible through resources shared with the USA under existing agreements, like Echelon.
- It would seem that individuals acting on behalf of the Government of Canada, (political parties and the media?) have at times tried to mess with me in person, whether tailing me or trying to get me to compromise myself in some way (ex: for a few weeks
numerous a succession [edited 22/04/12 4:41pm] (10+) of pretty young girls would appear out of the blue wherever I was, sit beside me and try to engage/provoke me, as well as a couple of boys, which, though flattering, seems highly improbable to have been a succession of random coincidences, given their numbers, attractiveness and age difference).
- At times, such individuals have engaged in more direct action, like Dave Merleau and Alan Barber, who seemed to put some effort into physically preventing me from sleeping and trying to get at me through conversation while I stayed with a friend of a friend in Ottawa. On the behalf of whose organisation, I cannot say, though I would guess conservative in nature.
Story as I understand it from my limited perspective in chronological order.
On Sunday October 22, 2006, I started the blog Eugene Forsey Liberal on the spur of the moment, in a fury at Stéphane Dion being shouted down and prevented from saying what he wanted to say, by supposed Liberals and federalists in a public debate in Montreal.
I had not meant to become a blogger, and meant to stop after the Liberal leadership race ended, but one thing led to another, and I continued blogging and writing on comment boards, and over time it became my impression that I was having some effect.
I had quietly joined twitter in July 2009 as “Rummi Negge” to observe its usefulness. I observed it was possible to make things happen through its use, that occasionally a meme could grow out of it and become prominent in everyday discourse, as with “busty hookers” and the Rahim Jaffer case, affecting politics and society in some way. After Greg Weston coined the phrase “fake lake” on June 06, 2010 to describe overspending at the G-8 summit, I saw an opportunity to make his alliteration grow and so commenced a humorous campaign on twitter to make it grow, which it did. (Unfortunately, as previously noted, some unhappy soul(s) has(have) put a lot of effort into trying to erase many traces of my work hither and yon.) I later engaged in some activity on twitter under the second moniker “EFLib”.
Through blogging, writing on comment boards, and tweeting, it seemed to me that I was able to have a some noteworthy effect on public affairs, as people generally took my anonymity as permission to be influenced by me without attribution, and take my thinking and writing as inspiration, to a more or less obvious extent. I had not anticipated this, thinking the pseudonymous “Eugene Forsey Liberal” as worthy of credit as anyone – who knows anyone online? I have always tried to be scrupulous in giving credit myself, with “one exception”. Since I had wished to remain anonymous to protect any family member from being tagged with the brush of my thinking/writing, as well as out of concern for my own privacy, this was a trade-off to which I was able to reconcile myself, though I found it upsetting at times. I was doing some good, and therefore felt I had the obligation to do what I could. Indeed, this dynamic allowed me to influence affairs more than would normally be the case, as in an analogy used by the Globe and Mail, people ran riot being inspired by my work. This was wrong to do without attribution, and it was wrong of the Globe to lay the blame on the shopkeepers for not better protecting their establishments, when the blame must first always fall on the rioters themselves, as noted by Andrew Coyne. Or as Alex Himelfarb replied when I mentioned it was my impression I had had quite a lot of influence on the media and public affairs, “they rip you off all the time”.
But not having anticipated that anonymity would lead people to think it OK to being inspired without attribution, and then seeing I was doing some good, from my political perspective, as I say, wrong as I thought it was, queasy as it sometimes made me, I felt that as long as the conditions existed to allow to do good (minority government dynamics), it was my obligation to do so. The common good was more important than my own. But it was that Globe editorial, and the conscious psychology behind it, that led me to this point, as I was appalled not just by the thinking, but that the writer(s) would think it OK to boast of it publicly. That indicates not just an individual problem or vendetta against me, but a collective one, when the political-media climate has degraded to the point where one feels comfortable not just doing wrong, but publicly boasting and laughing about it. Loutishness become the norm is unacceptable, and the only way to stop it is to talk about it and denounce it.
Given the motivation behind my work was firstly political, I had not contemplated the full implications from writers’ perspective, a conflict well described by Kate Taylor. Being closer to academics in perspective, I had been occasionally disappointed by the lack of attribution, though in return I had greater political potency. But when I considered matters from the perspective of writers, I felt/feel a certain obligation not to betray the righteous cause of freelancers and the like, who are looking to make a living from their writing. That was not my initial goal myself, though.
The other side to this situation is the enmity I have incurred from elements of the Conservative party and movement, and from elements of the NDP. I believe the Conservative enmity has its roots in work I did to support Richard Colvin and due process starting in the Fall of 2009. Knowing I was read by a goodly number of opinion-makers, when I saw the Conservative government’s disgraceful treatment of Colvin and attempts to whitewash matters, I felt the need to do what I could, which I was well-placed to do, given my understanding of these matters and the language and tricks attempted/used, which are not always obvious to people unused to the ways of the Foreign Affairs department and official Ottawa. I think I had some success in helping others deconstruct the nonsense and push on with parliamentary orders to produce documents. Though this may hard be for some to credit, given my background, education and analytical predisposition, when the 2009-2010 prorogation was declared, I had already thought that if I could help prominent members of the media stand for the production of documents and parliament, something like the anti-prorogation movement would spring up, and much of what happened (the facebook protest phenomenon, etc.) was much as I anticipated (though not the Opposition’s squeamishness at forcing an election on the issue). [I have long tried to influence matters by careful pressure in the right way, at the right time, in the right place, by creating or pushing/pulling inflection points. It is my belief, rightly or wrongly, that I have had some small success over the years, here and there, mostly unnoticed, which was good given the importance of privacy to me.] I made targeted contributions on facebook and in person, and through others, to try to keep things together. My second contribution was to try to keep the focus on the issue of the Order of Parliament itself, when the prorogation, more easily understood, threatened to obscure it. I got a then friend to convert his website into a tool to help keep minds focussed on the Order of Parliament (I had learnt just how short are the attention spans of the media and politicos). From there on, the Conservatives seem to have become a special problem for me.
My critiques of the NDP’s post-2003 strategy have also caused me some problems with elements of the NDP, which is a pity, since I was once a member of the party.
So it is my very strong impression that through a combination of blogging, facebooking, tweeting, conversation, and occasional motivation of others, I was able to have an unusually influential role in public affairs given my apparently minor position. Unusual because as while in absolute terms quite a few people know of me, several hundred, concentrated in the media and politics in Canada and elsewhere, almost no-one outside those circles does.
In the summer of 2011, given the majority government, I intended to forget politics for a bit and focus my efforts on my own situation. I wrote a couple of emails under my own name as a last bit of help to the Liberals. Shortly afterward, I observed phrases and themes from one of my personal emails appearing in various media outlets. I had had the impression, on and off, that my email had been hacked, but I could find no physical evidence, and that being so, beyond changing my password, there did not seem much I could do, without acting like a paranoid. But now it was clear that my email had indeed been hacked, and seemingly much of the media was privy to it. Yet no-one said or did anything about it. This concerned me not just for myself, but for interlocutors, family, etc.. I eventually tried to deal with it by inviting all interested parties to meet me and get it out of their system, but no luck.
I then became aware that Dave Duprey, who I had counted as a great friend, was party, in some way, for some reason, to some sort of recording of my conversations, or so it seemed. This seemed so crazy an analysis that I went to the hospital to get checked for signs of schizophrenia and mental illness, and the stress of the mind divided against itself led me to seek counselling to prevent suicide. The hospital found nothing underlying wrong with me, nothing clinical, nor did the therapist. But the stress of a mind trying to cope with two diametrically opposed versions of reality is enormous. Once I had become convinced of the betrayal of trust, despite having asked about it, face to face, in a manner that invited self-exculpation of any type, I felt the need to leave Vancouver out of fear I might lose my temper one day and commit some irreversible act.
I went to Toronto where I spoke to Alex Himelfarb, who confirmed my writing had some influence, and made it plain that such tactics, hacking, bugging, etc., are not unknown in Canada among the politically active; indeed he himself works on the assumption that all he says and does is being observed. This was the same analysis I subsequently received from Paul Champ, who declared one can either live with it, or move abroad, if possible. John Olthuis had already made it clear this was common for native groups and those who work with them, as the Globe had reported on its front page in the late summer of 2011. I had also remarked the Globe front page about the Americans being unhappy with the use of their electronic resources for the targeting of legitimate political adversaries in…Yemen. It can be important to read and listen to the media with great care, I have found.
I still found it hard to credit that I would be the target of such surveillance, and that furthermore, its production would be made available to members of the media, politicos, etc. I still thought it more likely that I was the victim of a succession of hacks and recordings.
I ended up spending Christmas with my parents in Ottawa and while there I observed that the phenomenon was continuing. Since I could be sure my parents would not bug me, then the possibilities were either government or some special technology from some private source. Knowing my parents’ neighbours, and the geography, the first option was almost certain.
Before Christmas I had stayed with one of my oldest friends, Alex Côté, who works for Foreign Affairs, and a couple of days into the visit he suddenly, unexpectedly declared an end to a 20-year friendship, and asked me to leave. Now, given the governmental factor, and the pressure he may suffered, it made more sense, and was more understandable, though still hurtful.
While in Ottawa I visited
Trevor Hache, whom I had known from a soccer team, and had always seemed like a decent guy. I asked him about various things, particularly media and political dirty tricks, and he said that while he himself had never observed hacking in the media, given the nature of the business, it was entirely plausible. As for the rest of it, he claimed to know no more than me.
Over the Christmas holiday my mother suffered a broken leg in a car accident, which obliged me to become the chauffeur for my father while she recovered. It was in this period that I had the odd experience of having at least 10 extremely pretty young women appear as if by magic wherever I would go (malls, libraries, bars, etc.) and choose to sit beside me, and then strike up conversation with me, something that also occurred with a couple of young men. Given their attractiveness and age difference, and the prevailing mores of male-female relations, it seems impossible these could all have been mere coincidence. I’m just not that charismatic.
Then when I would go play shinny, young guys who claimed they were from Calgary would strike up conversation with me. People identifying themselves as from Calgary early on in conversations was rather a theme for a while, and made me wonder, given everything, if that not might be some code to indicate they were on the good guys’ side from the point of view of the government, etc.. The same thing happened when I went to the Carleton graduate students’ bar. And there were a couple of fellows with whom I played shinny who showed up after I was there and who seemed somewhat familiar, one vaguely resembling a local Ottawa sports writer, another someone I seemed to recognise from political circles. I had already had the impression of crossing paths with three local writers who exhibited marked behaviour when they saw me, two on two different buses, one on an escalator. One of them left his bus almost as soon as he noticed me noticing him, was my impression. The other guy on the other bus made a general comment regarding a sociological situation I was discussing with some students that seemed most apropos. Sometimes, when the coincidences mount up, well…
Recently I attended a Senators hockey game with my longtime friend
Brad Crowe, and it was my impression that there were a number of coincidences that night, from the upgrade of the tickets, to the nature of the conversation to Alfredsson throwing me his stick after being named first star.
I was and am uncomfortable with allowing my parents, or anyone, have their conversations recorded and broadcast (the media’s motives may be noble. They’re a hard bunch to figure, motivation-wise.) As a result I have tried, however badly, to collaborate with this situation as little as possible. And there is no doubt that it has caused and causes me great stress, as it would anyone, I think, unless they were massive extroverts and unconcerned with the morals of the situation.
Friends and family may well be subject to pressure from all sorts of sources, government, political parties, media organisations. Understanding that makes me more understanding of some of their behaviour, though it saddens me.
But when I go to a café and two men, reeking of being political aides, suddenly show up and sit beside me and, talk about progressive-issues, well, trying to take advantage of someone being bugged to advance a (NDP?) political agenda is almost unbelievable.
Having lived in Communist-era Poland as a teenager, when my room and house were bugged, as well as in the GDR, where I would be tailed all the time, these sorts of things are not entirely extraterrestrial to me. But it is extraordinary that in Canada some mostly innocuous political activist like myself (I do not know if I am even worthy of the term, but in this context how else should I describe myself?) should be subject to such treatment. It is not just evil, it is pig-stupid.
Most recently I was staying with a friend of my brother’s, who has two roommates, the aforementioned Dave Merleau and Al Barber (Al was also friendly with my brother in high school). First this Merleau, apparently with a Masters in philosophy, tried to argue a very silly point with me, playing to the "mikes" I believe, and got a drubbing for his trouble. Then he and Al would take shifts, one playing the radio in the kitchen beside my room at crazy levels early in the morning, and then late into the night, or the TV. One night I came home to find no-one downstairs and the TV on at volume "11" – I had left my door closed and my room was dark so I assume it was meant to wake me up/keep me awake. Some nights they would literally hammer on the surroundings all night to keep me awake, and then ask me in the morning how I slept. Luckily, I had earplugs. But it did tire me out.
Shortly before leaving that house I went to the library to write a draft of this message. I have an old Acer 370C laptop which does not have wifi built in, so I like to write things on it in peace, without the temptation of internet browsing. I had tried making a wireless card work, but it doesn’t. But there was an ethernet card in the slot that had never worked, or was it put there? D-Link DFE-650 100Mbps. So there I was at Carleton U., where you need all sorts of protocols to connect to the internet, and I had not tried to connect, not wanting to, not knowing any of the protocols, and not having the right technology, so I thought. But I had written two previous documents under similar conditions and had had the odd sensation that somehow they were being distributed all the same, seeing a phrase or two appear in the public record. I was thinking about this, and mentioned it out loud "to myself" when I removed the Ethernet card to check – only to see the computer immediately die, and stay dead every try. Now I have tried turning it back on and now it’s magically working again. Computers can be up and down, but this is weird. Maybe it was just coincidence, but one gets wary.
I can confirm that the sensation of being under constant electronic surveillance does indeed cause serious physical harm, as well as the expected mental-psychological harm, as has been reported. Every day there are periods when I feel wretched, sick in my stomach, physically and mentally heavy, desiring nothing more than to disappear, and while that sometimes translated into suicidal thoughts, often my only escape is to collapse into an unhappy sleep (more a faint than a nap), whatever my surroundings. I have slept on a bench in rain and hail, slept on a bench beside heavy traffic, etc., because my body just stops, and I feel dead, and at those moments I lack even the agency to cause my own death, seeking only immediate self-negation through sleep. Just thinking about this situation makes me feel sick, heavy, tired, as I do right now, trying to write this note. I feel a sickness in my stomach, a weary-heaviness in my head, and just sitting in front of a computer and thinking-writing feels intolerable. I takes all my effort to do so, and often I just stop abruptly, and afterwards I just collapse. There is at this moment, as I try to reread this paragraph, a bile rising in my mouth, a weary hurt in my head, a deadness in my eyes and face, and of course tension throughout my body, especially in my shoulders, as my body rebels against thinking horrible, "impossible" thoughts of ongoing, neverending, all-encompassing rape of my life by hundreds of people.
Part of that is knowing how impossible this all sounds, and how there are hundreds of people who have known of this for months (years?), and do so now, at this moment, as I write, and just observe and indeed profit from my abuse. Thinking-writing that thought now makes me feel sick in my stomach, or sicker.
The collective evil is so overwhelming it make me want to collapse, to die, to disappear. And knowing that it is unbelievable makes me feel self-negating, occasionally suicidal. It takes everything I have to try to stay alive, and to sit here and write, as my duty to inform the world. By the most minimal standards of decency, there is no justification for this abuse of me over the last months (years?). So I unwittingly became a political actor. I have done nothing illegal that I know of, and I have worked only for the public good as any social-democrat/social liberal/progressive would see it. Is it illegal to be able to think and write? And in so doing, to affect events? No, surely not. I have received as much flotsam and jetsam of information as anyone imbedded within their country's and within the world's politics does, but what has distinguished me is my ability to analyse things, to make connections, as it always has. But who would think this would lead to abusive surveillance, and complicity by all these other actors?
I don't understand this situation. Many people know more about it than I do, they know who hacked my email which they mentioned on twitter. They know about all the rest of it. And yet, no-one is talking. I rarely forget that less than 1% ever actively resist tyranny in any culture, but given the hundreds of people who know and have known for a long time about this situation, we are looking at zero out of several hundred people. Even if there was some legal prohibition (everywhere?!) usually there's someone, somewhere, willing to stand up and denounce such abuses (although I can't think of any analogous abuses) despite threats, and once one person has spoken out, the rest can and do, if only to repeat the first person's words in news reports. But in this case, not a one, anywhere. And as anyone reading this will acknowledge, what I am describing seems so improbable, not to say impossible, that my own statement seems more likely the product of a mental condition than reality, and if it is true, then it would really need validation by those who know of it - yet, if we accept, for the sake of argument, that I am right, and they are staying silent, then my speaking of it just makes me look crazy and makes it easier for others to continue to observe me, mock me, and use my life as material for their own cultural production.
As I say, I don't understand this, and I don't understand the unanimity of people's behaviour. There seem to be a variety of motives at work, some positive (in their own minds), many malicious, either actively or lazily. Like a person, dislike a person, agree, disagree, some things are so beyond the pale of the most minimal standards of decency that it is unbelievable that so many can be so unanimously a party to such evil, or it would be, if that hadn't been the case for months (years?). Maybe I overestimate my moral fibre, but I find it hard to believe I would be party to such behaviour against my most loathed adversary even for a day. How could one?
Now I have written this, leaving much out, and doubtless making mistakes. But as noted at the very beginning, this seems to be largely true, as admitted by others who would know. So I ask that you redistribute this piece as widely as possible. I do not know if it will do any good, but it is all I can do, and it is all you can do. Anyone who has known me in the past knows that as mad as all this sounds, given what I am like, and given the third parties mentioned, this may just be true. As my cousin Aaron said: “freakier things have happened”.
Addendum – Relationship with media
As a blogging polemicist, I was trying to influence public debate and public affairs, and part of that was using the correct polemical tone to to start and maintain arguments, so as to push and pull debate as best I could. Egalitarian by nature, I was surprised to discover some in the media heavily resent bloggers (do they resent Speakers Corner in Hyde Park too?), which, in addition to the tone required to achieve my political objectives, may explain some of their less noble behavior. To be honest, when I first tried to go public to try to deal with this situation, I was surprised they did not all just admit my existence and role. It is perhaps this combination of general resentment of bloggers as a class, and my sometimes fierce tone in argument that might explain their behavior. But here are two things to give you an idea of what has been going on. As for my general role re. the media, this argument with Dan Gardner (one of the few to show some decency re. my role) gives an idea:
EugeneForseyLiberal
Good post. And as point of information, I'd add this:
Justice Committee 30/09/09, Comartin: "I had better put this on the record. I sat through the last four appointments to the Supreme Court. The last two rounds have been the prairie provinces and then the Maritimes. We're sworn to secrecy in sitting on those panels, but the reality is that there were more than enough candidates—I don't think I'm disclosing any surprises here—from both of those jurisdictions to meet that high test of bilingualism. I don't think I can say anything more than that without going into the specifics of their credentials, but there was not a problem with having a significant number of qualified candidates."
Justice Committee 17/06/09, Graham Fraser: "Again, I have a great deal of respect for Judge Major, but I'm not sure that somebody who doesn't speak the other language knows what he doesn't know. Donald Rumsfeld once talked about the known knowns and the unknown knowns. I don't know how a unilingual person can evaluate how important language knowledge is as a professional competence. By its very nature, if you don't speak another language, then you don't understand what you would understand if you did speak that other language."
Dan Gardner
No one, including me, said mandatory bilingualism meant there would be no GOOD candidates. But it will rule out a large portion of those who would otherwise be considered, which means the choice will be made from a much-shrunken pool of candidates -- and simple math says the BEST candidate will often not be in that shrunken pool.
By the way, I want to thank Philippe for providing a model of constructive criticism. So many can't seem to write about this without making ridiculous insults and accusations, eh Eugene?
And who is someone without legal training -- someone like Graham Fraser, par example -- to evaluate the importance of language or anything else to the professional competence of judges?
Careful with this argument, Eugene. You'll wind up telling everyone in Ottawa to shut up and then you'd have no one left to argue with.
"Brushing up"? This is not cocktail party bilingualism we're talking about. It's a level of fluency sufficient for handling complex jurisprudence, a level which, I dare say, many native-speakers would struggle to achieve. It took the chief justice years of hard work to get up to what she describes as "moderate" oral fluency and years more hard work -- in a bilingual work environment -- to finally achieve full fluency.
EugeneForseyLiberal
Hmm, I could swear the Gohier article under discussion contains testimony from someone with all the qualifications, legal and linguistic, not to mention the experience, to make that evaluation. Unless bizarro logic has now led some to claim a unilingual judge like Major is better at evaluating the importance of language than a bilingual one, like L'Heureux-Dubé? Curious. That sounds almost like the anti-factual, anti-empirical arguments so beloved of the Conservatives on crime and drugs matters. Unilinguals like Gardner & Major know better than actual bilingual jurists about the importance of language in legal affairs? Next we'll be privileging the testimony of well-meaning anti-drug hardliners over that of those who actually work on the front lines, who have actually seen things from both sides. I look forward to the expected columns now in favour of hardline anti-drug policies based on the deeply held convictions of the well-meaning ignorant.
I don't know if Google translation will do the trick but you might want to actually read the Le Devoir article:
http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/287807/cour-supreme-le-bilinguisme-des-juges-est-essentiel-dit-claire-l-heureux-dube
"And who is someone without legal training -- someone like Graham Fraser, par example -- to evaluate the importance of language or anything else to the professional competence of judges? "
So I simply pointed out the obvious, that a bilingual former SCC justice is definitely someone with the ultimate qualifications to make that evaluation. An evaluation that is impossible for a unilingual. Just as it's impossible, according to you, for a bilingual without legal training to make such evaluations.
I have nothing against unilinguals - some of my best friends are unilinguals, why, I remember this delightful unilingual I met once, so warm, so free and natural in its self-expression, how sad we bilinguals are so removed from our wild unilingual roots, out of touch with our natural selves, because of our overly intellectualised upbringing. Verily, far from disdain, I admire the noble unilingual savages, in all their primitive glory, etc. etc... ;)
Come now. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either bilingualism is essential (not simply desirable, but essential) for our highest judges in a bijuridical bilingual country, or it is not. The question comes down to the perceived importance of language as part of culture and the law. It seems hard to see how one can claim someone with no knowledge of the "other" language can more credibly claim bilingualism should be optional than someone with, using your own criteria, legal training, who actually knows both languages and says language skills are so important to the law that bilingualism must be obligatory.
It seems easy enough to resolve the question. We poll all the bilingual lawyers and/or judges and ask them what they think, and abide by the results. We could even require a double majority, anglo bilinguals and franco bilinguals must both agree. I suppose the crucial issue would be to make sure we posed a clear question, so as we could ascertain a clear answer. I would even go so far as to say that the clearer the question, the lower the double majorities required to settle the matter.
PS. Next column: "I was wrong on listening to the best experts for making public policy all along, one should go with one's gut"?
Uh I wrote a reply and it seems to have disappeared, or maybe it never appeared - I was (am) out of the house, checking out some gear at the Apple store, checked in and typed away, so who knows what happened. Anyway, if Macleans can find it, good, if not, I'll check back later this evening and try to rewrite it. Basically, one can't have one's cake and eat it too. And some of my best friends are noble unilingual savages... ;)
