Oh Canada...

Now that our "historic" election is over (and people have mostly forgotten about what sort of change we are hoping to believe in) it might be nice to poke fun at a few other countries who are also making themselves appear rather silly. I happened upon two news items from my lovely neighbors to the north.

The first one is really quite absurd. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are "functionally disabled by obesity" have a right to two seats (or more?) for the price of one fare. So where do we begin? I didn't know that being obese meant one automatically had more "rights." Do people who are obese also have the right not to pay more for food? Or are they entitled to a larger house or vehicle to accommodate their disability? If obese people have this right, what about very tall people? Surely they are just as uncomfortable squeezing into a single seat - they really could use the whole row. What about people with kids? Why stop at one seat - families with young children must have a right to the whole plane! Right?

The right to a free airline seat certainly isn't an inalienable right. If the Canadian government wants certain people to have additional legal rights, then so be it. It will be interesting to see what sort of rights will magically appear next...

And speaking of rights, the Canadian government seems just as happy to take them away. Students at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario will now have to be much more careful of what they say and to whom they say it.

"The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in when they overhear homophobic slurs, remarks bashing women or racially tinged insults, along with an array of other language that could be deemed offensive."

Who decides what is offensive? Apparently the facilitators were trained, but it seems like the policies they follow could be changed on a whim. I would guess that making comments about someone being obese would fall under the "array" of language that could be offensive. Where does it end? At least some of the students have concerns about this new initiative.

" "Having a program like this in place could stifle public discussion if people are worried their private conversations are being monitored," said Angela Hickman, managing editor of the Queen's Journal, a campus newspaper."

If I were a student at any university with a policy like this, I would be very concerned about what could happen if you say anything remotely offensive. Which of your classmates could you trust? What if your friends enjoy the (artificial) power it gives them to report something they heard to a facilitator? Notice the article made no mention of what happens to students who refuse to change the way in which they speak.

Well, at least Canada gave us hockey and Wendy.