Nick Westover

I find this whole maternal health charade that the Canadian government is currently involved in kind of hard to take. Of course the opposition parties have goaded the Conservatives on the abortion issue, hoping for some – any! – traction. But that doesn’t seem to be the real issue; it’s just a play for votes.

Shouldn’t we, rather than imposing an ideology and complicating already fraught programs, aim to adequately fund health and education systems capable of meeting the needs of all residents of a program’s coverage area? Give developing nations the money and support to implement comprehensive programs but leave the moral decisions to them.

And where did the current government’s interest in maternal health come from anyway? Other than left field, I mean. Even the Globe & Mail’s queen bee conservative columnist today joked, in reference to the Guergis/Jaffer affair, “Few people have less pull than the status of women minister in a Harper government.”

A photograph of the protest march on BC Place during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. The iconography here is by no means representative of the entire protest but the image is representative of the spirit of it.

Well, the games have finally begun and I think most people in Vancouver, or at least most that pay attention to these things – relatively few – are sighing with relief that a large protest march against the Olympics went over with next to no violence. It was the big unknown in the 2010 Winter Games equation – how bad was it going to get?

Credit goes to the protesters who were generally your average “nice” but concerned Canadian citizen and it also goes, in no small measure, to the VPD who turned up in ball caps rather than more intimidating riot gear. It seems our security services are learning from mistakes made in the past, when they’ve met bravado with bravado.

It seemed a good time was had by many, legitimate concerns were heard by the international media (though, good luck finding an article in the foreign press about those issues today) and people made it home safely, save for a few police officers who were hit with flying traffic pylons.

An antipodean photographer who came prepared with ballistic glasses, helmet and mask asked me incredulously about David Eby’s speech, whether it was true that Canadian security forces had indeed been paying visits to the homes and workplaces of anti-Olympic activists in the lead-up to the games. I wonder if the media wasn’t a little disappointed.

That was the big hump that many people were holding their breath over. There will be smaller protests by more and less radical groups but they will be isolated for the most part and probably won’t represent the concerns of most of the people at Friday’s march.

Oops… it’s started already.

Pics shortly.

The Canadian government is supposed to be back at work on Monday morning after ample Christmas holidays. Sadly, while the world continues to turn and there’s no end of issues that need taking care of, we’ll be without a sitting government until after the Olympics.

Marc Emery turned himself in to BC Supreme Court today to await extradition to the United States on a charge of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana.

In this photo, taken last week, Vancouver’s self-proclaimed “Prince of Pot”, Mr. Emery meets and greets well-wishers at his last support rally before turning himself in to Canadian authorities.

I love the bling.