Spring is not my favourite season.  Don’t get me wrong – I like that the snow and cold tend to disappear once spring has rolled around.  Autumn is a far better season.  Slowly cooling down.  Light shows in the night sky.  Camping and firepits.  Spring just can’t compete with a robust and multi-talented season sucha s Autumn.

What did spring do to earn my ire?  Constant temperature fluxuations.  +20C one week. -10C and multiple feet of snow the week after. What  5 minutes and the ground is soggy from all of the rain.  +15 on Sunday and -4 on Monday.  I’m sure you get the picture.   Spring is just fickle.  No consistency.  No attempt to establish a nice seasonal standard and stick with it.

I tend to start experiencing sinus troubles (or worse) during the spring.  Today, my nose feels like someone is pounding on the side of it.  Headaches.  Sneezing my brains out.  Watery eyes.  Confused nasal cavity that doesn’t know when to be stuffed or runny and so tries to do both at the same time.  Typical allergy type suffering.  Except…

I’ve never really been known to have allergies – excluding peanuts and the dogs – to spring before. 

Traditionally, at this time of year, I just catch some awful cold or flu due to the continual changes in temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure.  This year I think I’ll manage to avoid the cold *knock wood* but suspect I’ll spend just as much time whining about how horrible it is to be sick.

Which just plain sucks because it’s Robin’s escape from Dell party tonight.  She’s now officially laid off as of the end of her shift today.  She begins a new term position on Monday.  It’s a 6 month temp position filling in for someone on leave so there’s no guarantee her contract will be extended.  We’re not worried.  Yet.  Lots of companies are interested in her skills.  And, as we do enjoy teasing her, if she can’t find a job she likes, she can always fall back on teaching.  Robin is a former science teacher and from what I heard, she was a great one.

But I digress.  To sum up:

• Spring is bad
• Sinus colds are a pain
• Tonight we party like it’s 1999
• My next round of classes start Monday, May 5th
• Robin starts her new job the same day – no sitting around for a month blogging for her…
• I’m anxiously awaiting my final grades in my Winter 08 courses.  Likely a need to wait few more weeks before I know anything.

I’m attempting to file my taxes and the gov’t netfile web site is SLOW! It feels like I’m back on a 3600 dial up connection (circa 92). I know, we’re really late. Normally we file in February. My fault. I quit my job mid-way through the year. Remember that? I certainly did. Especially since I had to wait on a bunch of silly tax documents from the old job so I could file this year. I think it’s my lot in life to be sitting around waiting due to taxes. At least this year. I waited for documents to arrive. I waited while Vista decided to throw a fit when installing Quicktax. Don’t get me started on Vista. Stupid piece of poo OS. Can’t wait until I get my new Mac. Now, what was I ranting about? Oh yes. Taxes. And Waiting. I’ve been waiting for the stupid netfile site to load for 25 minutes and I’m quickly going mad. Drew claims his work systems are even slower than CRA’s and that I’d go out of my mind waiting for files to transfer across his network. Not a surprise really. He does work for the government.

And the netfile site STILL HASN’T FINISHED loading yet!

Have I mentioned that I owe $$ this year? Can’t say I didn’t know that was coming. Should get a nice refund next year when I can start claiming boatloads of tuition fees. But this year the gov’t is sucking blood from a stone.

ARGGGGHHH!

Yup, still waiting…

Did I mention I have to file before midnight tomorrow to avoid any penalties? Cause, somehow despite tuition fees, charitable donations, RRSP deductions I still managed to OWE $$ to the governement. I’m sure I’m fighting with a few hundred thousand other folks who also waited until the last minute – for whatever reason – for access to a Web site that’s seen better days.

Perhaps I should go watch NCIS and come back to check the status during the commercial breaks?

Update: 3 hours later and I’m still trying to access to site to file my taxes.  I don’t plan on spending all night at my keyboard desperately trying to load the files and I’m at work tomorrow, so I’m starting to get worried.  I’m sure the server load tomorrow will be much worse and I’ll have a much smaller chance of accessing the site if I can’t get it through tonight.  *sigh*

As for NCIS (see comments) – I’m not sure I can tolerate the neat freak.  She’s irritating, thoughtless, and self-involved.  The show already has someone to fit that bill – Tony.  Not that I don’t adore Tony.   It’s just that a show can only have one Tony type character.  Giving a second one boobs doesn’t immediately make her worth a larger story arc…

Edmonton is becoming a more and more violent city. The employment boom has been enticing people from all over the country to move to the city over the past few years. This appears to have led to increased drug problems, the housing boom – making much of the rental housing unaffordable for lower/fixed income and the working poor – and homelessness. I’ve noticed an increase in crime since we moved to the city. That said, I still feel safer in Edmonton than I did when we lived in Winnipeg.

What is burning my biscuits this morning is a quote from the Edmonton Sun.

“It’s too close to my home. You hear something like this on the other side of town but not close to your place,” – Jo Hindal

Disclaimer: I don’t mean to pick on this woman in any way, shape or form. She’s just the most recent person credited with uttering the phrase in the local news. If someone else had said it I’d be crediting the statement to them… It’s the content of the statement I have an issue with, not the person who said it.

To me, this statement smacks of a NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude I’ve noticed a lot in Edmonton lately. First there were the people who don’t want Habitat for Humanity homes built in their neighbourhoods [here, here, and here] and prefer those type of people move into lower income neighbourhoods. Hicks goes so far as to write that “Nobody wants somebody (or something) “below” them moving in next door.” Living in a lower income neighbourhood that’s slowly starting the climb out, I can honestly say I’d welcome the Habitat homes and their owners. The owners really show a pride in their homes and work to integrate into the neighbourhood. Just because someone is poorer than you doesn’t mean that they’re somehow lesser than you. *grrrr*

But I digress. This rant was supposed to be about crime and murders and not housing.

Crime happens all over the city. Sure it’s a shock when something happens so close to you. But it’s time to face it, there’s no limit on where it’s going to occur. Fights and crime aren’t locked within preset boundaries within the inner city. Checking the locations of many murders in the city will quickly demonstrate how spread out these events are. It’s only a matter of time before they’ve occurred in everyone’s backyard. Unless something changes. That’s a terribly disturbing statement. I’m beginning to wonder what Edmonton’s tipping point will be? Would the broken window theory work here? Many people interviewed indicating hearing fighting but how many (if any) of them called police?

For the sake of balance, the broken window theory is criticised here and here. Robin Skyler Tell (2004) writes:

In Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy, Earls and his co-authors Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush put forth the concept of collective efficacy, “defined as social cohesion among neighbors and their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good.” This collective efficacy, the study has shown, is the greatest predictor of neighborhood crime–not, it turns out, the windows, or any other symptom of “disorder.”

Whichever theory you subscribe to I think one thing is obvious. Everyone wants to see something done about the crime rate in Edmonton. There’s a significant amount of work that needs to be done on a community and social level. More affordable housing needs to exist. Community housing – with medical and psychiatric care facilities – needs to be increased for those with social or psychological issues. More importantly I think people need to stop turning their backs on disturbances and stop assuming that someone else will call the police or intervene. Chances are, that someone else is thinking the same thing.

When I was in the Philippines I had a student who was a wonderful lady. She helped me learn how to get around in the city, often took me around different shopping areas, and spent a good chunk of her free time making me feel at home. My fellow traveler (for two of my trips to Manila) and I became fast friends with her and looked forward to the opportunity to see her again on our return trips. She welcomed us into her home and her family. Over a series of 6 trips to Manila I spent many months in her company.

She’d always wanted to travel and see Canada and we decided we’d like to sponsor her for a two week visit to Canada. After talking her out of trying to visit in winter (she wanted to see snow, we knew it would be far too cold for her) we settled on her arriving in May and began writing the supporting documents for her visit. We agreed to help defray the costs of her visit and planned on her staying in our home for the 2 week duration of the planned trip. His wife was planning on booking the two week period off work to talk her around the province to sightsee. Since we couldn’t get time off for her visit Drew and I were planning on spending weekends traveling with them and had plans to spend our evenings with her. We wrote the sponsorship letters outlining our housing and care plans. An itinerary of our sightseeing plans was submitted (per the request of the consulate). Our friends booked her plane ticket and sent the information off to the consulate.

Today we learned her visa application was denied because she didn’t have enough money set aside to ensure she’d return to the Philippines when her visit was over or to cover the costs of her stay in the country. She’d scrimped and saved and, with the assistance of her brother, managed to set aside $1000 USD for the vacation. Considering she had a return plane ticket, no housing costs, no transportation costs, and no food costs, we’re baffled as to how $1000 spending money for a 2 week vacation was considered insufficient for her trip.

I know many people who travel to visit friends or family for similar or longer durations with far less money in their pockets and no real plans for what they’ll be doing or where they’ll be living.

What really annoys us is the fact that no where in the notice of refusal is there an explanation of what the government considers to be “enough” money to come to Canada on vacation. The letter advises that there is no appeal process for the decision and that the file cannot be reopened. A new visa request must be accompanied by another $75 processing fee (a significant amount of money for her) and has to have new information or the second request will be also be refused. Despite including all of our contact information on the sponsorship letters, not one of us (4 people in total) were contacted regarding our plans, arrangements, etc.

Attempts to learn just how much money was required for visa approval met with an inadequate response when we called the local immigration office. We were advised to call the consulate in Manila, incurring long distance charges, if we wanted to learn anything about the application. The rejection letter does not include the name of the officer who made the decision. Instead two initials appear on the document. Of course they won’t release any information regarding the file to any of us without prior written permission from our friend. I’m sure we’ll be requesting she do this asap.

I’m disheartened by the actions of our government officers. We’ll allow murderers, rapists and terrorists to stay in the country and give them years to fight deportation orders but won’t allow a law abiding citizen of another country spend 2 weeks in Canada visiting friends.

As a Canadian citizen I can hop on a flight to Manila and spend 3 weeks in country without requiring a visitor’s visa but there is no reciprocal agreement in Canada for Filipinos. It strikes me that were she a criminal and false refugee claimant she’d likely be granted entry into the country while her claim was reviewed and provided with access to social services. Because she’s trying to do everything by the book and fully intends to return home at the end of the 2 weeks she’s denied the opportunity to visit our country.

Some country we live in!

Those who’ve been paying attention in the Canadian blogosphere are likely well aware of this issue.  For my readers who may not float around politically slanted blogs as often as I do this may be new.

I may not read some of these authors frequently (or in some cases, at all).  I certainly don’t agree with everything written by those I do read.  However, there are many aspects of this lawsuit and the underlying concept that speech should be censored that should be of concern to us all.  Since there’s already so many postings on the topic of the Canadian Human Rights Commission behaviour of late [here, here, here, here, here, and here for starters], I’ll skip over Warman’s association with the CHRC and the battles in which he’s currently embroiled as plaintiff in that arena.

What does concern me is the pattern of behaviour that has been in evidence since the early-to-mid 1990’s.   For how much longer will we allow this to continue in Canada?

First step: silence dissenting opinions – bloggers, publishers, authors and columnists of national magazines and newspapers – no one is safe.

Second step: censor books.  Remove from public libraries materials that some might find offensive.  Oh wait, that’s already been tried.  The BC Gov’t had to draft and enact a law specifically designed to protect libraries from being forced to comply with requests to remove books from their  shelves by public citizens who happen to be suing the book’s author.

Third step: dictate what we’re supposed to think and feel and how we are to behave?

Section 2, Fundamental Freedoms, of the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms guarantees all Canadians “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication“.    The absolute right to free speech is limited to politicians statements within the House of Commons.  All other Canadians share limitations on what Section 2b of the Charter will cover.  Despite what has been bandied about in past CHRC tribunals regarding the concept of free speech, it is as much of a Canadian value as an American one.  The Canadian right to free speech may not be as old or ingrained as the US right – the Canadian charter wasn’t made official until 1982 – and does not protect “Hate speech”.

‘Twas (I believe) Voltaire who stated: ‘I don’t agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’  Many military members I’ve met over the years have spouted this same phrase as an underlying defense for why they willingly go or do whatever the Canadian government tells them to – despite their personal beliefs.

Keeping all this in mind, I’d ask those of you who aren’t already aware of the battles being fought to take a few minutes to visit those being sued to learn more about the accusations.   If you’re able, please consider donating to their cause.

• Ezra Levant
• FreeDominion.ca
• Jonathan Kay of the National Post
• Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals
• Kathy Shaidle of FiveFeetOfFury.com

h/t to the broomking