Swearing in the House of Commons is news

Environment Minister Peter Kent chides the other parties for not having been in Durban at the recent UN Climate Conference.

This is despite the fact that he is directly responsible for their absence, as he banned them from attending as part of the Canadian contingent (it is not unusual for opposition parties to be included, allowed to attend).

Justin Trudeau swears at Environment Minister Peter Kent then later apologizes.

“And I think the opposition has its back against the wall and doesn’t know what to do,” [University of Ottawa political science expert Michael Behiels] said. “Not a single opposition amendment has been accepted. Everything they try to do is basically laughed at, dismissed. So the opposition MPs have had it, and it’s just pouring out.”

Frustration all around.

Read more here.

Stop The Tar Sands

Not surprising but still ultimately sad. The guardian’s take here, which nicely sums up the (non)-repercussions of backing out of Kyoto at this point, and what it would have taken to meet Kyoto (it’s true that by now it was way too late).

From PostNoBills:

The Canadian government currently lead by Prime-Minister Stephen Harper is not gambling with our future, gambling implies that we are unsure of the result, Stephen Harper, his governement and the governemnt of Alberta lead by current premier Alison Redford as well as the various vested buisness interests are plainly and simply destroying our environment. Here are a couple of quick facts: About 90% of the water used to process the Tar Sands ends up in acutely toxic tailing ponds that line the Athabaska River and threaten the health of the whole river basin. For every barrel of oil extracted, six barrels of tailings are produced.  [Steph: For every 1 barrel of oil extracted, 3 barrels of water are used.] According to a recent Environmental Defense report, the ponds are already leaking over 11 million litres a day of contaminated water into the environment. Should proposed projects proceed on schedule, 2012 would see a five-fold increase, to over 25 billion litres a year.

For such a vast and beautiful country, full of boreal forrests and fresh water it is quite sickening that we are also responsible for one of the largest projects that is causing such catastrophic environmental damage to the entire planet. It comes as no surprise that Canada’s current political leaders would be withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocal. When you’re running one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emisions it makes no business sense to have to pay for it, does it? The fight is not about Kyoto now, it is about stopping the tar sands. How much more of the future are we willing to forsake to run the present day. We should be talking about sustainability not profitabilty.

postnobillz

“It’s in the way we live our lives exactly like the double-edge of a cold familiar knife and supremacy weighs heavy on the day it’s never really what you own but what you threw away and how much did you pay?”
Greg Graffin

Today it was announced that Canada will be withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. It’s not too hard to see why, all one has to do is look towards Alberta and the Oil Sands. “The Alberta Oil Sands Operation are the largest single point source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada” Source, desmogblog.com If current development plans proceed, by 2020 the Tar Sands will release twice as many greenhouse gases as are currently produced by all the cars and trucks in Canada.

The Canadian government currently lead by Prime-Minister Stephen Harper is not gambling with our future, gambling implies that we are unsure of the result, Stephen…

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When you don’t like your patient

I’m still on the way home, on the second leg of my trip.  I am eavesdropping on the conversation going on in the row in front of me.  13C is coming home from Guyana where he’s been working in mining exploration.  He looks like a young guy, maybe around my age, with a kind of Western or Southern drawl.  He’s describing what he does to 13D and I’m trying to listen for any indication of gross injustices against the environment or local communities.  He’s an outgoing guy and seems really friendly.  He leans over the empty seat beside him and is now chatting with 13A, whose contribution to the largely one-sided conversation is the occasional “ah” or “huh”, “yea…”.  He’s talking about his life working overseas.  He proudly mentions having 4 girlfriends, who don’t know about each other “no, they don’t know about each other”.  He sounds jovial, like someone talking about how fresh the fruits are at the local market or maybe how a dad would talk about his son’s little league team.  I wondered how I would approach this if he were my patient.  Would he tell me about his 4 girlfriends?  How would I respond?  Impassionate, matter-of-fact: “Oh, well do you use protection? Have you been tested for any STDs?  Alright, well we have the facilities here to do that”.  I pictured the movie effect where you have a map with a pin-point on it that just spreads like a black wave, sludgy and oozing across the continent.

I remember one time my mom came home from the office upset.  One of her patients was cheating on his wife who was terminally ill.  His mistress wanted him to promise to be with her.  He was stressed and depressed but didn’t know why.  When my mom asked if he thought perhaps it had to do with his relationship situation, he was surprised and hadn’t considered it.  My mom was boiling the whole hour of therapy, as she was reminded of being cheated on herself so publically by my dad.

As much as Western medicine is about micromanagement and control of biology (at least we like to think that), we’ll eventually end up with patients who we will feel crappy listening to.  I’m thinking of the simulated patient we had who was abused by her husband but didn’t want to admit it.  Doctors are legally mandated to report child abuse and elder abuse but not spousal abuse, and I can’t imagine what it will be like to have to see some women walk back out into trouble despite all the counselling you give.

I guess part of becoming a health professional is always keeping a professional front.  Obviously my mom couldn’t bring her own baggage into the care of her patient.  The trick will be finding the balance between being jaded and being human.

Go home

One of the most frustrating things about my school are the other students and the things some of them say.

On my way home to Toronto via Trinidad, the first leg of the flight was in a Turboprop with about half the plane full of students.  In this small plane, some are talking about how desperate they are to get off the island and never return.  You couldn’t pay me to come back, one said.  When the cabin was sprayed for mosquitos, one joked about the next thing waking up in a strange place, Hostel-style.  Reply was that even being drugged and abducted and tortured would be better than staying in Grenada.  And so on.

It’s embarrassing to be in the same group as these people, so harshly ripping into an amazing, beautiful country in front of people who have grown up there and live there now.  Totally without a clue, these guys are.  I feel pretty certain that they’ve hardly ventured out from campus except the usual trips to the IGA or beach, and doubtful that they’ve had a conversation with a Grenadian outside placing an order for food.  Because that’s the only way I can explain how anyone can live here for 1-2 years and still talk like that.