Recently retired UK Supreme Court justice Lord Jonathan Sumption has been giving the 2019 Reith Lectures in the last few weeks. BBC Radio has broadcasted two out of five episodes so far. Check out my earlier post “2019 Reith Lectures by Jonathan Sumption” for links to the lectures.
BH: But parliament decided on a referendum when it came to Brexit.
JS: Yes, parliament can do many things that are unwise, that are inconsistent with the way democracies ought to work. I’m certainly not suggesting the referendum was unlawful. I’m simply suggesting that it was extremely unwise and that the last three years are an illustration of quite a lot of the reasons why.
BH: OK, you are not a fan, I get that.
JS: I’m not a fan of referendums, full stop.
BH: Well, that answer the second thing. To get us out of this mess, do we need a second referendum.
JS: Well, I don’t think we should have the first.
BH: But we had it now. So now how do …
JS: Let me finish my sentence. I don’t think we should have the first. But having had the first, it may well be that the only way that we can get out of the mess created by the first is to have another one. But the moral is not to have as many referendums as possible. The moral is to have none at all.
I’ve been looking forward to listen to the 2019 Reith Lectures by Jonathan Sumption who recently retired from the UK Supreme Court. Lord Sumption “argues that a decline in the willingness of politics to engage with divisive subjects has been accompanied by an unwelcome rise in the power of the courts.”
While I may not agree with everything Lord Sumption says, the ideas he expressed are almost always thought provoking and worth considering even we may come to agree or disagree with him. Incidentally, the Q&As after each lectures contain some rather interesting questions so make sure you listen to that too.
Biography and auto-biography are types of non-fiction books that I enjoy a lot in reading as I get to learn from the life and times of interesting people. I recently discovered and learned to love Valedictory Remarks from the UKSupremeCourt YouTube channel. Here are two video remarks I enjoy (Lord Sumption, Lord Neuberger, Lord Clarke) and I hope you will too.
Comments Off on ‘Reflections on the Rule of Law in a Dangerous World’: The 2018 Sir David Williams Lecture by The Rt Hon. Beverley McLachlin | Canada, Law, politics, UK, Video, YouTube | Permalink Posted by kempton
“Emma’s silence” was Jaclyn Corin‘s, MSD student and one of #MarchForOurLives organizers, answer to the Twitter question “What was the most emotional moment during March?” I felt the same.
I watched the 3-hour event live and I was initially puzzled of the silence from the beginning to the end of the silence like many people. But in hindsight, it was the most powerful and emotional moment for me as it uses time, an abstract idea in itself, to share the horror the MSD students experienced that tragic day. In merely 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the time since Emma came out on stage till she spoke again after the alarm rang and she broke her silence,“The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” Emma concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
If the #MarchForOurLives is to succeed, thousands and thousands of American students, youths, and adults have to keep on fighting for changes. While I’m less hopeful for adults’ abilities and determinations. Fortunately, today’s students and youths will become adults tomorrow and they will change the world!
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead remains the top quote in my collection of Quotes I LOVE!
Again, here is Emma’s full speech transcript which I shared previously.
“In a little over six minutes, seventeen of our friends were taken from us, fifteen were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community, was forever altered,” she said. “Six minutes and twenty seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice; Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine’; Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan; Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp; Helena Ramsey would never hang out after school with Max; Gina Montalto would never wait for her friend Liam at lunch; Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan; Alaina Petty would never; Cara Loughran would never; Chris Hixon would never; Luke Hoyer would never; Martin Duque Anguiano would never; Peter Wang would never; Alyssa Alhadeff would never; Jaime Guttenberg would never; Meadow Pollack would never.” Then she stood in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She said nothing. The crowd watched, also silent. A chant of “never again” started, and then faded out. Emma still stood. Finally, the beeping of an electric timer rang out. “Since the time that I came out here it has been six minutes and twenty seconds,” she said. “The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” She concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
[credit: speech transcript mostly from New Yorker with some corrections made near the end of the speech.]
The speech video with subtitles.
Watch Emma Gonzalez take the stage for 6 minutes and 20 seconds — the exact amount of time it took for a gunman with an AR-15 to take 17 lives in Parkland pic.twitter.com/s2pCWdoPnB
March 29, 2018 Update: Vice News, “Hoaxers Say Survivors of Mass Shootings Are “Crisis Actors”” //”This isn’t a fucking conspiracy. This is real life, and people are fucking dying.”
Immediately after the tragedy in Parkland, conspiracy theorists claimed that the school shooting was staged, and that survivors were actors.//
I’m so inspired by the students who spoke today at #MarchForOurLives in DC yesterday and so many sibling marches around US and even the world (including Calgary, Canada and UK)!
Video and transcript of Emma González’s short speech.
Watch Emma Gonzalez take the stage for 6 minutes and 20 seconds — the exact amount of time it took for a gunman with an AR-15 to take 17 lives in Parkland pic.twitter.com/s2pCWdoPnB
“In a little over six minutes, seventeen of our friends were taken from us, fifteen were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community, was forever altered,” she said. “Six minutes and twenty seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice; Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine’; Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan; Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp; Helena Ramsey would never hang out after school with Max; Gina Montalto would never wait for her friend Liam at lunch; Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan; Alaina Petty would never; Cara Loughran would never; Chris Hixon would never; Luke Hoyer would never; Martin Duque Anguiano would never; Peter Wang would never; Alyssa Alhadeff would never; Jaime Guttenberg would never; Meadow Pollack would never.” Then she stood in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She said nothing. The crowd watched, also silent. A chant of “never again” started, and then faded out. Emma still stood. Finally, the beeping of an electric timer rang out. “Since the time that I came out here it has been six minutes and twenty seconds,” she said. “The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” She concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
[credit: speech transcript mostly from New Yorker with some corrections made near the end of the speech.]
“The scene was brought to mind Saturday, on that impressive outdoor Washington stage before the countless faces at the March for Our Lives demonstration, as Emma González, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who has become one of the most prominent voices in the #NeverAgain movement, went on with her speech — and then, for a few minutes, didn’t.
It was one of the day’s most galvanizing moments, and a reminder of how little we appreciate in this Tower of Babel culture that the most powerful message can be the one we don’t try to put into words. After naming the dead in the Parkland, Fla., massacre, and identifying, like Hamlet, experiences they never would get to see, González simply stopped talking. The rest really was silence.
The absence of language, the extended pause for contemplation, remains a rare thing in public discourse, and even rarer onstage. A moment of silence is the ritualized form of respect we employ on many occasions to mark tragedy, but it’s usually only a moment. González’s silence was an act that felt, in its way, radical. It was as if she dropped the mic — yet a mic was still in front of her. The silence went on for about five minutes, and, as cable news cameras swept the crowd, you could tell some people did not know quite what to do with themselves. Gonzalez fixed her gaze into the distance, as if she were concentrating on something out of our normal range of perception; at times, she trembled and wiped away a tear. In the crowd, some people started to chant, or applaud, perhaps because the rule in this society seems to be that if there is a vacuum of noise, someone has to make some.
The interruptions were respectful, though, and eventually, as González steadfastly held her tongue, the hubbub died down. We were left with the image of a young, grieving woman, drawing our attention not to herself but to something more abstract: to time — the amount it took for a killer to mow down her classmates and teachers.
[…] González touchingly reminded us that a profound dialogue doesn’t always require them.“
20180324 update: For now, I’ve found these two posts by Brad Templeton to be very insightful and cover some of the issues that I want to write about but Brad wrote in much more detail! Have a read, 03/20 “New facts and questions on Uber robocar fatality” & 03/21 “It certainly looks bad for Uber“. I may still add more if I see more facts of the case especially when Uber starts to voluntarily (or be compelled to) provide more of its internal technical data. I hope Uber won’t try to brush this fatality under the carpet. Will see.
From the AP report “Experts: Uber self-driving system should have spotted woman”, this Uber self-driving SUV is using LIDAR laser sensors technology to “see”. (note: LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging and it “measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light” which can see perfectly well even in total darkness as it uses laser.) I made this observation re LIDAR in direct response to this sentence of the news report, “The lights on the SUV didn’t illuminate 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg on Sunday night until a second or two before impact, raising questions about whether the vehicle could have stopped in time.” And the fact the Uber safety driver was NOT paying attention to the road when he killed the 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg!
““The victim did not come out of nowhere. She’s moving on a dark road, but it’s an open road, so Lidar (laser) and radar should have detected and classified her” as a human, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies autonomous vehicles.
Smith said the video may not show the complete picture, but “this is strongly suggestive of multiple failures of Uber and its system, its automated system, and its safety driver.”
Sam Abuelsmaid, an analyst for Navigant Research who also follows autonomous vehicles, said laser and radar systems can see in the dark much better than humans or cameras and that Herzberg was well within the range.
“It absolutely should have been able to pick her up,” he said. “From what I see in the video it sure looks like the car is at fault, not the pedestrian.”
Smith said that from what he observed on the video, the Uber driver appears to be relying too much on the self-driving system by not looking up at the road.
“The safety driver is clearly relying on the fact that the car is driving itself. It’s the old adage that if everyone is responsible no one is responsible,” Smith said. “This is everything gone wrong that these systems, if responsibly implemented, are supposed to prevent.”
The experts were unsure if the test vehicle was equipped with a video monitor that the backup driver may have been viewing.
Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The National Transportation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, is investigating the crash.”
I will try to come back to this article and add more details and updates in the coming days when I have more time. Will see.
Minister of Transport Hon. Marc Garneau (@MarcGarneau) is expected to testify again in front of the Senate committee next week to address some of the concerns. Dr. Lukacs hope the minister will be “asked some very tough questions about the air passenger rights issues“. Dr. Lukacs sees “no reason why tarmac delay should be more than 90 minutes“; “no reason why passengers should not be getting compensation for delays caused by the airlines’ own maintenance issues“; “no reason why third party complains by public interest advocates advocating for public interest should be barred“.
Dr. Lukacs and his Air Passenger Rights group have been more effectively using social media (Twitter: @AirPassRightsCA, Facebook page: AirPassengerRights, website: AirPassengerRights.ca) in raising Air Passenger Rights issues. In one recent tweet, a video clip of Minister Garneau was shown (see below) where he stated in his senate hearing testimony he has “never ever said that the Bill of Passenger Rights is contained in the legislation” and then followed by Hon. Garneau saying, in a House of Commons CPAC video clip, “and on top of that we’re providing a Passenger Bill of Rights“.
Government forced to admit: there's no passenger bill of rights #travel#SenCA#TRCM
— Air Passenger Rights (@AirPassRightsCA) March 19, 2018
In the above tweet, the one click weblink bill-c49.ca directs people to a AirPassengerRights.ca web page with a quick and easy way to send a letter of complain to senators expressing their concerns re Bill C-49.
“In an interview late Sunday night, [Dr. Stacy] Smith said she was shocked and grateful to hear that McDormand had given a shout out to her work.
“I’m utterly elated,” she told the Guardian by phone. “It’s a complete surprise.”
Smith said she had worked with attorneys to create specific contract language and has already been in touch with numerous actors interested in the idea.
“The real goal is to counter bias in the auditioning and casting process,” she said, explaining that the contract could also stipulate that if the film ultimately failed to meet the requirements, the distributor would have to pay a “penalty” to a fund that supports female directors and other underrepresented groups.
Smith said A-list stars could use inclusion riders to ensure proper representation and inclusion of women, people of color, LGBT people and people with disabilities.
“The goal is that talent can take the inclusion rider and adopt it in ways that make sense for their values and their beliefs,” she said.“
Comments Off on Best Actress Frances McDormand talks Inclusion Rider before global Oscars audiences | Law, Oscars, politics, united states | Permalink Posted by kempton
Here is my video interview with Dr. Gabor Lukacs, Air Passenger Rights Advocate, re Supreme Court of Nova Scotia appeal of Small Claims Court of Nova Scotia decision (Paine et al. v. Air Canada – SCCH No. 460569).
The following three news reports cover various aspect of the Loblaws $25 “gift” card but missed an important catch that I want to discuss in this article.
In short, the “catch” as others and CBC reported, “Signing up for gift card (and getting that $25) doesn’t preclude participating in class actions, but any payout would be deducted“.
The catch that is missed at least by CBC, CTV, and even Huffington Post is that as millions of Canadian adults apply for the gift cards is the “Retention and Cross-border Transfer” clause in the “Program Privacy Policy“. The “missed catch” is why should millions of Canadians subject our private and confidential information including
a) Full name
b) Date of Birth
c) Address
d) Home phone number,
e) Mobile phone number, and
f) email address
to courts of foreign countries including El Salvador or other random countries we don’t even know! When we are talking about millions of Canadians’ private and confidential data potentially being “stored, accessed, or used in a country outside of Canada“!! Why shouldn’t our data be treated with more care/respect and be stored in Canada and Canada alone?!
Don’t trust my words blindly. Visit the “Program Privacy Policy” link on the registration page, you will see (emphasis added):
“Program Privacy Policy […] 5. Retention and Cross-border Transfer Personal Information may be stored, accessed, or used in a country outside of Canada by Loblaw, the Program Administrator, Blackhawk and/ or Peoples, or by service providers engaged by any of them, for any of the purposes identified in Section 4 above including the United States and El Salvador. Where Personal Information is located outside of Canada, it is subject to the laws of that jurisdiction which may differ from those in your jurisdiction and any Personal Information transferred to another jurisdiction will be subject to law enforcement and national security authorities in that jurisdiction.”
Canadians may want to question and challenge Loblaws’ Program Privacy Policy. by calling Loblaws and ask them directly or even ask our elected MPs and try to hold our government and the Competition Bureau accountable.
“Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin is honoured at an Ottawa dinner on the eve of her retirement. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney, as well as former governors general David Johnston and Adrienne Clarkson pay tribute to Canada’s longest-serving chief justice. The event is organized by the National Judicial Institute. (December 14, 2017)”
Note: I’m looking forward CBC National’s Sunday December 17, 2017 in-depth interview by Rosie of the Chief. Will add a link when I see it. [update: Video interview has now been added!]
“Marketplace took a close look at the proposed legislation and found areas where it will fall short of protections offered elsewhere, especially in Europe.
Europeans enjoy the world’s strongest consumer protections when flying. Their bill of rights outlines how airlines must treat passengers when things go wrong, including generous compensation that can reach up to $900 for the longest delays on long-haul flights.
‘Airlines should be liable for compensating passengers in the event of cancellation, delay or overbooking that is somehow caused by mechanical issues.’ – Gabor Lukacs, passenger advocate
Those rules apply to any flight on a European carrier, but also extend to Canadian carriers if the flight is departing from Europe. Had Chris Conrad been flying in the opposite direction, or with a European airline, she would be owed a payout of $900.
“It’s just not fair,” she says.“
it seems clear that the “new” Passenger Bill of Rights (Bill C-49 is commonly known as passenger bill of rights (CBC news article), read the text of bill, PDF) will still be willfully inadequate compare to European/British passengers’ rights! Minister @MarcGarneau PM @JustinTrudeau, Why Canadians are still getting worse protections than Britons & Europeans?
Reading “Private Consultation with IATA About Regulations to be Developed” paragraph in Dr. Lukacs’ submission (PDF file) which I quote below (emphasis added), one is left to wonder if Canadian Transportation Agency consulting with IATA is kinda akin to consulting with foxes to design hen house? Surely, an effective and powerful passenger bill of rights has to protect passengers from airlines, no? This reporter will leave it to the readers to decide if it is fair or not in saying “akin to consulting with foxes to design hen house“.
“The International Air Transport Association (“IATA”) is an international trade association of the airline industry, representing the interests of the airlines. Before Bill C-49 would be passed by Parliament and before any public consultation would take place about the regulations to be developed, the Agency has “sought IATA’s input with regard to the regulations that” the Agency would draft.“
To casual readers, IATA sounded a matter of fact (and may be even rather “proud“) that the Agency has “sought IATA’s input with regard to the regulations that” the Agency would draft..
Have a read yourself the exact words IATA’s own lawyer filed in Supreme Court of Canada File no. 37276: Motion Record (June 19, 2017), Tab 1, p. 13, para. 25. which I quote here (emphasis added) to let readers judge for themselves,
“25. Also, on 16 May 2017, Minister of Transport Marc Garneau introduced Bill C-49, the Transportation Modernization Bill, that proposes to amend several key provisions of the Canada Transportation Act. Bill C-49, as currently drafted, authorizes the Agency to make regulations in respect of various matters affecting air passengers. The Agency has sought IATA’s input with regard to the regulations it will draft. IATA is actively participating in the consultation process with Transport Canada and the Agency on this topic.“
At the end of the day, it is up to us Canadians to hold our Government of Canada accountable to make Canada better! I recently learned the Order of Canada‘s Latin motto is desiderantes meliorem patriam (They desire a better country). Most of us Canadians will never get an Order of Canada but I say it is still important for us to strive for a “better Canada“! A “better Canada” that includes much improved Air Passenger Rights that is at least on par (if not better) than rights long ago (12 years ago!) received by Britons and Europeans! Right now, we are not!
Let me ask again, Minister @MarcGarneau PM @JustinTrudeau, Why Canadians are still getting worse protections than Britons & Europeans?
Comments Off on Op-ed: Airline passenger rights: Will you be protected? (@CBCMarketplace) Minister @MarcGarneau PM @JustinTrudeau, Why Canadians are still getting worse protections than Britons & Europeans? | Canada, Law, politics | Permalink Posted by kempton
[Note: the video itself should be the authority of what were said as accidental transcription errors are quite possible.]
0:18 Reporter (KL) asks Dr. Lukacs (GL) to explain the CTA’s (Canadian Transportation Agency) Air Transat Tarmac Delay $295,000 Penalty. How the $295,000 was likely decided? Is it a good decision for Canadian Air Passengers?
1:35 KL: Why would you say this is a “publicity stunt”?
1:38 GL: The CTA “pretends it has teeth, pretends it issues a big fine while in reality, the fine has been waived.”
1:46 KL: How come? On paper and the press release, Air Transat has been fined $295,000. Even around the world, BBC news has been reporting the same $295,000 fine.
2:13 GL: “According to the media release, Air Transat will not have to pay money that it pays passengers. In other words, it can take the amount of the fine and pay that to passengers. However, it comes out to $500 per passenger and Air Transat has already pay to many passengers $400 as I checked back in August [2017].”
2:40 KL: I see in the previous CTV report you sent me. Air Transat already paid $400 to some passengers. Now $500 is like nothing [not much more]?
3:00 GL: Two problems. 1) Under the law, CTA cannot waive or reduce the amount of penalty that has been set out in notice of violation. Once the notice of violation has been …
3:46 GL (2) The notice of violation has been botched. It identifies two violations and each violations can only carry a maximum fine of $10,000.
4:00 KL: Notice cites only two violations and it cites specific sections of the law (which the reporter admits he isn’t clear about them and their legal limitations) but from GL’s reading, each violations can ONLY be fined up to $10,000?
4:28 GL: “If they treat a WHOLE AIRPLANE LOAD OF PASSENGERS being locked without water and food and air as a SINGLE violation as it transpires from the notice of violation, then each of those violations can only carry $10,000 penalty. What I think is breach of each passenger’s right is a separate violation and therefore for each passenger [of the 590 passengers in total] the agency can issue $10,000 for a total of $5.9 million which makes us see how little penalty has been issued if you look at things properly.”
5:25 GL: Two simple questions for the CTA: Q1) How the fine was determined? Based on what calculations? Q2) What gives the agency any authority to waive the fine that has been issued under the notice of violations? GL is not aware of any such power in the Canada Transportation Act.
6:00 GL: Whatever penalty they [CTA] put in the notice of violation, they cannot after the fact … waive part of [the fine]
6:13 KL: You are saying CTA has no power to say, within the $295,000 fine, if Air Transat has or will pay any amounts to passengers, those amounts can be deducted from the fine. (It should be NOTED that in this CTV August 4, 2017 news “Air Transat offering $400 to passengers stranded in Ottawa“, Air Transat has already “offered monetary compensation ($400) as a gesture of good faith” long before the hearings and the new “penalty”.)
6:41 GL: Further discussions about the fine calculations and maximum penalties.
7:11 GL: If CTA counts each passenger as a separation violation, then it is only $500 per violation, then by CTA’s own guideline, it would be exceptionally low! If treated as 590 separate violations, then it would be unreasonable in each case to fine the airline only for $500.
7:38 GL: Personally GL thinks each passenger should be treated as a separate violation but if one looks at the notice of violation, it is NOT how the notice reads.
7:50 KL: Ask about precedent setting power of such a big and high profile case.
8:13 GL: Discuss the numerical side of the fine calculation … vs the actual “Notice of Violation” (the legal foundation of the fine as the reporter understands from GL’s explanation) which states TWO violations. […] Either way you look at it, the penalty doesn’t make sense! TWO violations: Max $20,000. If seen as 590 separate violations, then the fine should be close to a few million dollars!
9:08 KL: Some passengers were unhappy of the CTA’s penalty. The reporter imagines himself in the shoes of the trapped and locked up passengers (for over 5 hours) and he would be unhappy with a $500 “penalty” or compensation!
9:43 KL: What do you expect to see happen? Air Transat has no problem agreeing with CTA’s determination and paying the penalty. Are there any recourse for passengers that got stuck on those planes?
10:49 KL: How will a challenge benefit those affected passengers? Will the passengers be able to get more [monetary compensation]? Individually negotiate a higher amount …
11:07 GL: The message has to be clear that “the penalty is issued and waived at the same time”! ‘We issue the penalty but also waived it is what happened! “Thats what I would like to put a stop to.” […] “The agency cannot play fast and loose to show some good statistics that we issued a big amount of penalty but at the same time say we are not collecting it, we are waiving the amount. Thats dishonest. Thats a form of intellectual dishonesty. Something that borders on fraud to the public because the public hear, ‘Oh, there is a big fine issued.’ but actually the fine is not being collected. So if you are ti fine a person, the fine has to be collected.”
11:59 KL: Just to clarify. Is GL using waive because money paid or to be paid to passengers, etc can all be deducted from the $295,000 fine? Sooner or later, with whole bunch of deductions, Air Transat may not pay anything or very little as fine to CTA?
12:39 GL: “Yes. And there is an important issue of the Rule of Law here! That if the law says the agency can NOT waive penalty, then the agency cannot waive penalty. There is nothing in the law that permits doing this. So it is difficult to understand how this came to be. And what type of arrangement, what type of communication took place between CTA and Air Transat that lead to this outcome. What negotiation took place? It is troubling. I’m concern that something inappropriate happened in the background.” […]
13:41 KL: Obviously, you have no evidence that Air Transat and CTA had made any backroom deal or anything?
13:49 GL: The timing looks suspicious that they waive the penalty and Air Transat is going to comply. The way that the amount seems to be very close to what they already paid. It looks suspicious. We don’t know for sure but one thing I like to make sure that this type of backroom deal is not possible because the law doesn’t permit that. So even if they want to make this kind of backroom deal, the law is there to ensure that if a fine is issued then a fine has to be collected.”
14:22 KL: You want to appeal because of the precedent setting power of cases like this?
14:32 GL: “It is MORE than precedent setting power. It concerns the Rule of Law. The Parliament decides to grand the agency certain power, the agency cannot overstep those boundaries. If they issue a notice of violation, the have to stay within the confine of the law. The law says they can issue notice of violation. Nothing in the law that would allow them to rescind a notice of violation on the basis of some amount that has been paid. Thats not the power the enforcement officer has. The notice of violation has been issued at that point. They become functus officio. They’ve done their jobs.”
15:13 KL: Would you worry about unintended consequence that if you challenge the decision, and then the court agree with you that the fine can be $20,000 maximum which amounts to next to nothing?
15:31 GL: “It would show how inadequate the legislation is for sure. And it will also uphold the rule of law. The Rule of Law as a principle is more important than any kind of Air Passenger Rights. It is a far bigger, it is the corner stone of democracy. If we abandon the Rule of Law as a principle for some financial benefit, then we loose the backbone of our society!”
15:56 KL: Thats an interesting claim. Will see what GL decides in the coming days. Thanks a lot Dr. Lukacs for explaining the decision to me and the viewers. This, to me, is an important and precedent setting and obviously you mentioned Rule of Law is at stake here.
P.S. Traditional news media like CBC, CTV, Global, TorStar, BBC have done different reporting of this story (some including background and some with passengers interview). Worth a read and watch.
“New York City to me is a readymade! The beauty about New York City is co-existence and tolerance and sharing.” “Fences can be solid as a wall. But many fences you can see through. You can have hatred or admiration about the other side.” – Ai Weiwei (Vimeo video @1:47 & @2:42) (ref Public Art Fund) (Adding this to my long list of Quotes I LOVE)
P.S. Thrilled to have made a tiny contribution to Public Art Fund for this project. “A small act is worth a thousand Facebook Likes.” as I like to say.
As Dr. Lukács put it in the 2016 CBC news interview,
“The underlying issue is, can you stand up for your neighbour? For the weak? For those who may already be disadvantaged in some way in society?“
I first interviewed Dr. Lukács in August 2013 for the video report and article “Halifax mathematician gets bumped Air Canada passengers $200, $400, or $800 compensation“. During this 4+ years, I’m still amazed that a regular Canadian non-lawyer (math professor/researcher by training) has volunteered so much of his free time in helping others. And sometimes even risking being sued (and actually being) by airlines which have teams of lawyers and money.
Over four years later, I still find the following 2013 answers given by Dr. Lukács very illuminating and insightful of why he spend so much of his free time in helping the Canadian flying public,
“Upon hearing the interviewer suggesting this delay compensation [$200, $400, $800 from Air Canada] should be named after Lukács, similar to mathematical theorems were named after Euclid or Gauss, Lukács paused to think for a moment and then thoughtfully insisted that,
“… it doesn’t matter where it was me or somebody else who got those [air passenger] rights. What is important [is] that those rights are put in place. And that people will now have better treatment. It doesn’t matter it was me, or my neighbour, or my friend or you, or that person in another city who made those changes. For me, it’s a question of I’ve learned enough about airlines to know that something are just wrong and against the law. And when I happened to see that, like in the case of what happened in Ottawa airport, I cannot just walk by and do nothing. I feel a responsibility.
Knowledge gives some responsibility. When you know that something is wrong, and you have quite a good idea of how to fix it, that does impose on you some level of moral responsibility, social responsibility. And so the issue of air passenger rights needs a face in Canada. I don’t see myself as a full-time passenger rights advocate, I am a mathematician after all. But certainly, I know that I am able to bring, through the agency, to the Canadian public some prospectives & arguments that benefit everybody. So I do it.””
Concluding thoughts
For years, I’ve gained inspirations from this one particular quote I LOVE: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” by Margaret Mead.
Seeing what Dr. Lukács has been trying to achieve by himself, it seems to me we sometimes doesn’t even need “a small group … people“. At times, all we need is one person to try to make a difference for the better in our increasingly perilous world. Do what each of us can, in the best way we know how. Success is never guaranteed but we and no one else can blame ourselves after we try the hardest we can.
P.S. Have a watch again of the action inside the Supreme Court yesterday.
P.P.S. I’ve always found the political comedy-drama “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington“, a film is about a newly appointed United States Senator who fights against a corrupt political system, insightful and illuminating. As I get older, I find I’m not naive enough to ignore the bad but I’m more willing & eager to look for the good each and everyone of us can do in our own area of interest and competence.
There is no reason you or I can’t be our own “Mr. Smith”, “Dr. Lukács”, … and going to our own “Washington”, “Ottawa”, … which to me stands for ideals we strive to achieve.
P.P.P.S. Speaking about theorems being named after mathematicians, I still hope Dr. Lukács’ Air Passenger Rights work won’t slow down his mathematics research as I hope to see a math theorem bearing his name one of these days.
Posted by kempton 
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Kempton - ideas Revolutionary 