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OTTAWA - The federal Liberals tabled a bill Friday that seeks to eliminate self-induced extreme intoxication as a legal defence for violent crimes, after the Supreme Court struck down a similar provision in May.

Bill C-28, introduced by Justice Minister David Lametti, would add new language to the Criminal Code that creates criminal liability when a person who commits a violent crime is in a state of negligent self-induced extreme intoxication.

For a person to be found liable for their actions under the drafted update of Section 33.1 in the code, prosecutors would need to establish that they were criminally negligent.

The court would need to consider whether a reasonable person in that situation could have foreseen the risk that ingesting intoxicating substances could cause extreme intoxication and lead the person to harm another person.

The specific circumstances of the case would factor into the analysis, such as the substance itself and the quantity that was consumed, the persons state of mind at the time and anything they may have done to mitigate such a risk.

Extreme intoxication is defined in the bill as intoxication that renders a person unaware of, or incapable of consciously controlling, their behaviour.

It is not a presumed defence, meaning that the test would only apply if a defendant specifically raises it.

This has only ever happened a handful of times, Lametti said.

It would not apply to the vast majority of cases where drugs or alcohol are involved and almost never in situations where only alcohol was consumed.

This is not about being really drunk or really high, he said, repeating several times: Being drunk or high is not a defence for committing criminal acts like sexual assault.

Marci Ien, the Liberal minister for women and gender equality and youth, told reporters the government has been increasingly concerned about online misinformation suggesting that the recent Supreme Court decision meant that being drunk could be a defence for sexual assault.

She cited social media posts with hundreds of thousands of likes and views, including one that suggested rape is now legal if youre intoxicated.

Lametti said one of the motivations for closing the gap in the law so quickly was to address some of the rising fear and confusion around the decision.

You dont want someone to think, Oh, I can have a few drinks and do whatever the blank I want, he quipped.

In its unanimous May ruling, the Supreme Court made it clear that being drunk will never get someone off the hook for a violent crime.

Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote in the decision that under the previous wording of Section 33.1, convicting someone for how they behave in a state of automatism, or when they are too intoxicated to stay in control of themselves, violates principles of fundamental justice.

The wording had been added by the Liberal government of Jean Chrtien in 1995, in response to a 1994 Supreme Court decision that acquitted a man of sexual assault because he was blackout drunk at the time of the offence.

But it failed the constitutional test because a person could be convicted without the prosecution having to prove that they acted voluntarily or that they ever intended to commit a crime even though a guilty action and a guilty mind must ordinarily be present for someone to be found criminally responsible.

On that basis, the court upheld two acquittals of men who committed violent acts after voluntarily consuming drugs, and ordered a new trial in a third, similar case.

Some groups expressed concern about the court ruling, with Kerri Anne Froc of the National Association of Women and the Laws steering committee urging action to rectify a gap in the criminal justice system and protect women and children, often the victims of these crimes.

The court suggested Parliament could enact new legislation to update the language of the Criminal Code in such a way that extremely intoxicated people could still be held accountable for their violent crimes.

Lamettis office reacted with what he called lightning speed, consulting with stakeholders, court interveners and members of Parliament to come up with a solution that could get broad support.

Pam Hrick, the executive director and general counsel of the Womens Legal Education and Action Fund, appeared alongside ministers at Fridays news conference and praised the governments thoughtful, nuanced and constitutional response.

Asked whether he expects the bill to be passed by unanimous motions before the House of Commons and Senate rise next week for a summer break, Lametti said he is optimistic.

There is a point of agreement here, and I hope we can move this forward.

The NDPs justice critic, Randall Garrison, said in a statement that his party will push to have the bill passed quickly.

The Conservatives say they are still reviewing the legislation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 17, 2022.

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Liberals table bill responding to Supreme Court decision on 'extreme intoxication' - Toronto Star

The clock is ticking for the government to deliver on its ambitious promise to the New Democrats to deliver a dental care program for low- and middle-income uninsured kids by the end of the year, while cost estimates have nearly doubled.

The pledge is a key element of the Liberal government's deal with the NDP to stave off an election until 2025. The Liberals promised to provide coverage by the end of the year for children living in a household with an income of less than $90,000, expanding it next year to include under 18-year olds, seniors and persons living with a disability.

The plan is to fully implement the program by 2025.

Our award-winning journalists bring you the news that impacts you, Canada, and the world. Don't miss out.

The government has just over six months to launch a completely new program, but still appears to be in the consultation phase of the planning and hasn't settled on the most basic question: what form will this program take?

One option is for the program to be delivered as a federal transfer to provinces, which would either administer it alongside existing dental programs or amalgamate them together.

But the NDP have always pitched the program as a stand-alone federal dental insurance plan, administered by federal staff to fill the gaps in the patchwork of provincial and private programs across the country.

A third option to contract the program out to a private company is also on the table, according to several stakeholder groups who've been in talks with government officials but aren't able to speak publicly.

Each available path has its own pitfalls and would likely take more than six months to traverse, and it's not clear what concessions the NDP are willing to accept to get a federal dental-care program in place.

"We are driving dental care forward and are intent on delivering the stated goals. We believe weve found an excellent national model that meets expectations," said NDP health critic Don Davies in a statement Thursday.

The government's 2022 budget suggested the plan would cost $5.3 billion over the next five years, starting with a modest investment of $300 million this year to kick-start the kids program.

But in a legislative costing note, the PBO says the total cost of the program, if delivered as a transfer to provinces, could be closer to $9 billion, and the government would have to spend $939 million this year to get it going.

The PBO's report underscores just how complicated the government's task is in setting up a new dedicated program, the Canadian Dental Program said in a statement.

While we fully support efforts by all levels of government to improve Canadians oral health, were concerned that the timeline previously announced may be exceedingly ambitious given the complexity of this issue," said Dr. Lynn Tomkins, the association's president.

The government has so far held several one-on-one and roundtable meetings with a large slate of stakeholders, including those with an interest in health care, oral health and insurance.

A task force has been stood up to navigate the various options. The executive director of that task force, Lindy Van Amburg, was not available for an interview.

Instead, Health Canada issued a statement to say that coverage will be provided for children this fiscal year, suggesting the government may be offering itself slightly more breathing room by giving itself until the end of March to fulfil its deal with the NDP.

"The government of Canada is committed to respecting the timelines that have been set out for this program, and will provide more information as the design of the program moves forward," the statement read.

Still, the timeline is ambitious. If, as the PBO interpreted, the government decides to download its dental care ambitions onto the provinces, it will need to get buy-in from 13 provinces and territories with a myriad of existing programs and their own unique industry landscape.

The dental association prefers this option because it would support existing programs that need funding, be less disruptive to the insurance sector and pose a lower risk of people going without coverage during the transition.

The Liberals went through a similar process to realize its cost-cutting goals for child care last year, but it took nearly a year to get all provinces and territories to agree.

The politics of signing new provincial and territorial dental care deals may also be complicated by the fact that several provinces, including Quebec and British Columbia, have emphatically requested more money from the federal health transfer with less political meddling from Ottawa.

Contracting out a federal program comes with its own headaches. Some stakeholders have told the government it could offer best value for money, but transparency and accountability could be lost in the event a private company takes over the coverage.

Awarding a multi-billion-dollar procurement process would normally take upwards of a year. Companies need time to prepare a bid, government officials need to carefully go through each one, and that's all before the winning company is able to start working on the program.

It's anyone's guess how long it would take to launch a federal bureau with dedicated government staff.

The government will need to pick an option before it can even begin delving into the arguably much more challenging and detailed work of deciding which services will be covered, how much reimbursement the plan will offer and how it will impact the industry at large.

It's also difficult to know precisely how much the program will cost. If, as some groups fear, provincial and employee insurance plans drop coverage and refer patients to the federal program, the Liberals' promise to the NDP could become much more costly, very quickly.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2022.

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Liberals still dithering over dental care delivery to satisfy promise to NDP - Canada's National Observer

When the retired four-star general John R. Allen resigned as president of the Brookings Institution this week, he was already subject to a federal criminal probe regarding his alleged lobbying activities for the government of Qatar, a nation with which Brookings has a long and complicated history. U.S. prosecutors cited messages Gen. Allen had sent apparently seeking payments for work to help Qatar win Washingtons backing in a feud with its regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and then lying about it when questioned by the feds, which his lawyer denied on his behalf. Allens alleged crimes occurred before his presidency of Brookings began, but owing to its enormously well-funded presence at the time in Doha, he apparently felt this job was the perfect setting for him to continue to milk the Qatar monarchy and manipulate U.S. foreign policy in its direction.

The Times coverage referred to Brookings as a pillar of Washingtons liberal establishment and the prestigious, left-leaning institution. And its true: Brookings boasts some of the great liberal minds of this or any generationwell, at least one of them. But liberal or even left-leaning are labels that apply only in the alternate universe of punditocracy discourse, in which Trumpism is considered a slightly extreme but otherwise legitimate expression of one side of allegedly objective both sides reporting. The mislabeling of what is essentially a conservative (small c) establishment organization that, in recent years, has become enormously dependent on the kind of corporate donations that do not allow for much in the way of boat-rocking has two likely sources. One is the fact that Brookings fellows have been dining out for nearly half a century on the fact that G. Gordon Liddy wanted to blow it up on behalf of Richard Nixon. The second is a campaign, under way at least as long, to define anyone who does not embrace the increasingly flat-earth, now neo-fascist precepts of the dangerous lunatics who have seized control of the Republican Party as liberal. Brookings is left-leaning in the same way the State Department, the FBI, and the entire deep state are now considered to be liberal conspirators and the Democratic Party to be Communist pedophiles.

But for the still-sensible among us, take a look at who has been running Brookings for the past half-century. Its president from 1977 to 1995, Bruce MacLaury, spent most of his career in the Federal Reserve, with a stint in the Nixon Treasury Department. He was replaced by Michael Armacost, who was an undersecretary of state for the Reagan administration and ambassador to Japan under the first George Bush. At the same time, Richard Haass, who now runs the Council on Foreign Relations (and therefore employs genocide enabler Elliott Abrams), ran its foreign-policy department, and had been a senior director also in Papa Bushs National Security Council. Armacost was replaced by the famed Time magazine foreign-policy writer (and published New Yorker poet) Strobe Talbott, who also served as deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration. But I dont think anyone would have considered Talbott left-leaning in the sense of, say, Times onetime liberal columnists Barbara Ehrenreich or Peter Beinart, or, when it comes to genuinely liberal foreign-policy mavens, Paul Warnke or Morton Halperin. And Talbott was followed by Allen, whod spent 40 years in the not-so-left-leaning Marine Corps. (Media Matters, back in 1997, made a lengthy case against applying the liberal label to the institute.)

Read more Altercation

This is one problem with the Times (and others) outdated and inaccurate labeling. The other is a willingness, at least in this case, to focus more intensely on the transformation of the think tank culture itself. I have been an intern at two think tanks and worked as a senior fellow of three more. At each of the latter, I managed to isolate myself from any fundraising responsibilities, but such freedoms have grown increasingly rare and anachronistic, even in the genuinely left-liberal think tank world. Today, most centrist and even some liberal think tanks function as alternative avenues for lobbying by nations that would prefer not to be seen to be lobbying. Daniel Drezner, who wrote a book on a related topic which I discussed here in 2017, notes that think tanks are less heavily regulated than more traditional forms of political spending, such as campaign contributions and lobbying members of Congress, and adds, the percentage of cash donations from foreign governments to Brookings nearly doubled between 2005 and 2014. The think tank hosted a Middle East research center in Doha for 14 years, and stopped receiving funding from Qatar in 2019 after reportedly receiving more than $14 million from the country. (I read this on Vox.)

This 2016 piece from the Times takes a look at the overall issue of corporate funding of think tanks, and just what those firms are buying with that money. This one from the Post two years earlier focuses specifically on Brookings, which is considered the gold standard of Washington think tanks, but seeks to maintain that standard by collecting and distributing lots of gold, almost always in a manner that is consistent with the values and interests of both its investors and its customers. In that way, it is not so different from any other business, which the people who work therewho, in many if not most cases, have become responsible for raising the money for their own studiescertainly understand. But for the purposes of public consumptionand in many cases, self-respectthey must pretend as if they are not.

For more on the issue of foreign funding of think tanks and who gets what, take a look at this study. And if you wonder why the right wing is so much better at ensuring that their ideas are adopted by the political process than liberals are, even though they are, by and large, terrible, you really should read this interesting report.

Altercation readers might remember that I wrote earlier this year of a documentary shown about the life of the great Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua at Lincoln Center. Sadly, he passed away from cancer this week.

Yehoshua was born to a Sephardi family that had lived in Jerusalem for five generations, and this Times obituary does a nice job of walking one through his oeuvre. All of his novels are serious, even demanding, but rewarding undertakings. Yehoshua was almost as famous, however, for his politics. Along with fellow famous Israeli writers Amos Oz, Yehuda Amichai, and Aharon Appelfeld, he formed a mini-peace movement that provided nervous liberal American Jews de facto a way to oppose the machinations of Israels government when it mistreated the Palestinians or ignored chances for peace without being called self-hating Jews or worse. I visited Yehoshua at his home in Haifa for a piece I wrote in 2008, entitled Israel Turns 60, and wrote this:

The great Israeli novelist and Peace Now activist A.B. Yehoshua recently caused a stir when he wrote an op-ed for La Stampa in Turin, Italyreprinted in Israel but not in the United Statescalling on America to recall its ambassador to Israel as long as the practice of expanding the illegal settlements continues When I visited Yehoshua in his Haifa home, he explained that many longtime friends criticized this positioneven Amos Oz disagreedbut Yehoshua replied, If America loves us so much, they could help us to keep our promises Its like a father with a son and the son is taking drugs. I love him and I want to help him. But to help him, we have to break until he stops with the drugs.

Late in life, Yehoshua took a couple of stances that stirred things up. One was when he declared diaspora life to be basically ridiculousterming American Jews to be only partial Jewsand insisted that all serious Jews should move to Israel. This was deemed to be such a big deal that the American Jewish Committee published a little book about it. And in 2020, he announced he felt forced to give up on the two-state solution and try to create a single state encompassing Arabs and Jews as equal citizens. If you watch the movie noted above, you will see him attempting to promote this idea to West Bank Palestinians, who appear to like and respect the man, but do not have muchany, reallyfaith in his proposal ever becoming a reality. Anyway, take a look at his books, see which of them appeals most to you, and try it.

The world of Jewish Twitter is understandably angry over an apparently anti-trans article that appeared on the right-wing Jewish website Tablet, which is supported by the right-wing, pro-Trump Tikvah Fund. This gives me the opportunity to remind people that Tablet published what I think is a clear winner in the Worst Holocaust Article Ever Published by a Jewish Publication category in a walk. You wont find the article itself anywhere, but here is Jeffrey Goldbergs appropriately outraged discussion of it. Why nobody was ever fired over its publication I will never understand.

I have been fighting the long tail of COVID for, like, three weeks, and yesterday, tragically, its intensity claimed my ticket to see Paul McCartney in New Jersey, as I was not up to the trip. Please, whatever forces control the important doings of the universe, dont let me wake up and read that this unconscionably abbreviated performance was somehow picked up and repeated. (And really, Paul, Seventeen? Seventy would be more age-appropriate when singing it live.) Sometimes, guys, rather than trying to do this, its better to do this.

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Altercation: Is Brookings a 'Liberal' Think Tank or a Big-Money Lobbyist - The American Prospect

Ottawa, ON Dan Albas, Conservative Shadow Minister for Finance, and Grard Deltell, Conservative Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry released the following statement in response to the Deputy Prime Ministers speech at the Empire Club:

The Liberals so-called solution to the inflationary crisis that is devastating Canadians is only going to make things worse.

Todays speech by the Deputy Prime Minister demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the causes of inflation. Canadians are in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis because of the flawed tax-and-spend approach of the Trudeau Liberals.

This flawed economic approach eats away at the earnings of hard-working Canadians and ignores the most basic principle of economics: that spending during an inflationary crisis will only fuel inflation further. Yet, the Liberals continue down this path with reckless abandon, inflicting more inflationary pain on Canadians.

Worse, the new spending fails to recognize that people need immediate relief from the cost-of-living crisis Canadians are facing. Canadians are struggling right now. Theyre struggling to fill up their tank, with prices over $2.00/litre across the country. Theyre struggling to feed their families, as prices have jumped by nearly 10 per cent this year. Theyre struggling to afford the roof over their heads, with the cost of rent skyrocketing, and the price of a home jumping by 20 per cent this year.

And yet, the Liberals continue to blame global factors for inflation and refuse to provide the immediate relief to the cost-of-living crisis that Canadians need. Rather, they re-announce policies that wont take effect until the fall, as Canadians are left to suffer throughout the summer. Conservatives know that Canadians are falling behind and need help now.

Canadians deserve a government that will defend them from the cost-of-living crisis, and take real action to lower inflation and make life more affordable. Unfortunately, Justin Trudeau doesnt think about monetary policy and believes that budgets balance themselves. With his partners in the NDP, he continues down a tax-and-spend agenda that will continue to fuel the inflationary crisis.

Conservatives will continue to propose common-sense solutions that leave more money in the pockets of Canadians, support the economy, and lower inflation. While the NDP-Liberals continue to ignore the cost-of-living crisis, we will be the voice for Canadians that are struggling.

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Trudeau Liberals continue to fuel the inflationary crisis facing Canadians - Conservative Party of Canada

More than 40 people gathered at Summit Presbyterian Church in northwest Philadelphia on Thursday to watch the first public hearing from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Juana Summers/NPR hide caption

More than 40 people gathered at Summit Presbyterian Church in northwest Philadelphia on Thursday to watch the first public hearing from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

About an hour before the first prime time hearing of the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, people began to trickle into the courtyard of a northwest Philadelphia church.

They were there for a community watch event, one of roughly 90 organized by liberal activists, urging people to gather to watch the rare, televised evening hearing together.

"I expect to be shocked, and I didn't want to be shocked at home by myself," said Melanie Brennan, who lives in the Mount Airy neighborhood where the event was being held.

Brennan came to the watch event with a friend, Chauncey Harris. He had high expectations, and said that former President Donald Trump had evaded consequences for too long.

"I hope for now they'll be able to show people what the truth is, so we can get rid of our personal opinions and just judge the facts on the facts," he said before the hearing began. "That's what I hope happens. I hope we can get some justice in this country"

Brennan and Harris were among those who gathered at Summit Presbyterian Church to watch the hearing live, as members of the House select panel placed the blame for the violence that consumed the Capitol on Jan. 6 squarely on the former president.

Ahead of the hearing, Democratic State Rep. Chris Rabb, who represents this part of Philadelphia and spoke at the event, questioned how many people would be tuning in.

"It is likely that the majority of hardworking Americans will not be paying attention. And I don't say that as a judgement, I say that as an observation," he said. "And one of the reasons I feel that folks are not paying attention is there are a lot of people struggling just to pay the bills."

He called this a moment for collective action.

Before Chairman Bennie Thompson gaveled the hearing into order, Tim Brown, one of the event's organizers, presided over a satirical awards ceremony. The unflattering awards were doled out to Republican politicians.

"The first award of the evening is the Golden Boot award, given to the most servile and degrading act of bootlicking by a political toadie," Brown said.

The nominees for this award again, really, not an award were three Republican senators: Mitt Romney of Utah, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas.

Tonya Bah holds up a "Golden Boot" trophy, part of a satirical awards ceremony held at a watch party in Philadelphia for Thursday's hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Juana Summers/NPR hide caption

Brown, the organizing director of Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks, asked people to cheer for the politician they'd like to give the award to. Cruz won handily. A woman accepted a trophy, ostensibly on Cruz's behalf, standing in the front of the room, arms outstretched, holding a single, spray painted golden boot.

"I think it's important to add levity to dark situations," Brown said when asked about the role of the awards ceremony. "In some instances, to take the pressure off people, but also humor is a good way to get the point across."

By the time the hearing started, more than 40 people were seated in metal folding chairs to watch the livestream, projected on a screen in the front of the room.

Initially, people mostly watched quietly, occasionally having side conversations with a neighbor, or clapping to punctuate a point. That was until Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the select committee, spoke.

When she addressed fellow Republicans who have boycotted the proceedings and painted them as illegitimate, the crowd roared so loudly that it was hard to hear what Cheney said next.

"Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible," she said. "There will come a day where Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."

What Cheney said stuck with Raymond Torres, who also lives in Mount Airy and was preparing to leave as the committee took a brief recess.

"I just remember the Watergate hearings when Sen. Goldwater confronted Nixon and said you need to resign," he said. "The Republican senators have not really confronted Trump and said he needs to stop lying. At least Liz Cheney has been willing to do that."

Torres said that while he believes many people were tuned in, he was concerned about those who didn't find it necessary to view the hearings.

"It was very sad that Fox News refused to cover this, and has acted as a mouthpiece for [the] Republican Party, when this is a country that needs to learn its history," he said.

While other news networks carried the televised evening hearings, Fox News continued with its typical prime time programming.

Organizer Tim Brown also worried about who would watch the hearing. He said some people told him directly that if they couldn't watch collectively, they wouldn't do so at all.

When asked why, he said: "Trauma."

"People were shocked at some of the things being said. One woman came up to me, she said, 'I couldn't have watched this alone, this was too terrorizing.' When you saw those people breaching the Capitol, cops fighting for their lives, it was just horrendous."

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In Philadelphia, liberals gather to experience the first Jan. 6 hearing together - NPR