Defend the rights our soldiers died for -

http://www2.canada.com/northshorenews/news/viewpoint/story.html?id=a9df25e1-060d-468e-9122-616f0e816e82

Defend the rights our soldiers died for -

Elizabeth James,

North Shore News

Published: Wednesday, November 04, 2009

The Torah teaches: ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue’

Deuteronomy 16:20

Oy vey!

Why should North Shore readers get uptight about the tribulations of a 65-year-old Montreal taxi driver who is headed to court and to the Human Rights Commission, because he refuses to pay $1,400 in municipal fines?

Fair question, especially when we discover that he has ignored not one but six fines, the first of which dates back three years or more.

He has no-one to blame but himself, right?

We should care because, time and again, we have asked our soldiers to go to war to defend the Canadian and Quebec Charter rights of citizens to enjoy freedom of expression and of religion. Specific to this story, Canadian soldiers fought, and are still fighting and dying, to protect the rights of people like Arieh Perecowicz — a Canadian of the Jewish faith — should he wish to enjoy small mementoes of his family and faith in his workplace. Nothing in either charter — documents superior to those of bureaucratic bylaws — bans anyone from doing so.

The workplace Arieh speaks of just happens to be the taxi he drives around Montreal for 15 hours of the day.

It’s a case of common-sense justice.

To set the stage:

Arieh has been driving cab in Montreal since 1966; no troubles, no passenger complaints and, so far as I can discover, no tickets.

For most of those 43 years, he has carried with him two mezuzahs — tiny parchment prayers for a safe journey common to his faith. They are fixed to the frame between the front and back seats of the cab. He also carries photos of his wife and son, a blue and white Star of David, a Remembrance Day poppy and another tiny flag — the red and white Maple Leaf. These are the symbols of everything that makes Arieh the man he was, is, and wishes to be.

He treasures the symbol of Canada — a country that prides itself on being tolerant to all; a country that professes its belief in freedom of speech and religion and that, for one day every November, honours the veterans of past and present wars by wearing the poppy in its collective lapel.

How ironic, then, that this cabbie must go before a court and a tribunal to defend those rights all over again — in a province, no less, that has cost us dearly in its own constitutional struggles to be unique above all others in Canada.

This is because 30 years along Arieh’s travels, a municipal agency, the Bureau du Taxi, was established to administer the bylaws that cover licensing and safe operation of city taxicabs — and administer they did.

One of the city bylaws states: Every driver must ensure that the interior of the taxi is clean, remove papers and litter, empty ashtrays, and leave no object or inscription that is not required for the taxi to be in service or that is not provided for in this bylaw.

The loopholes for an officer’s subjective opinion are large enough to drive a bylaw van through; but this cabbie knew his taxi and his 43-year record were clean. He had been inspected on numerous occasions by both Transport Quebec officers and Bureau inspectors and passed with flying colours.

Arieh had no reason to worry about regulations until, in December 2006, the first of the tickets arrived — less than a week after he and several other drivers appeared on television to complain that the Bureau was failing to regulate unlicensed, out-of-city cab companies. Such a coincidence.

But who among us believes in the coincidences of government?

Why is it that, for example, drivers of Greek descent who display photos of the Virgin Mary, or others who hang rosary beads near their rear view mirror have received no tickets?

Arieh is in no position to hire a lawyer. So, after his court date has been set back six months to April 2010, Arieh must now defend himself against the power of Montreal bylaw officers, who have declared he has no right to be overt in the expression of his beliefs.

As Arieh explained in a weekend radio interview with CKNW host, Roy Green, “I am not especially religious; these tokens are just the stuff most of us have on our desks or pin to the cork-boards at work because they make our world a more pleasant place.

“None of my passengers has ever complained. Not about my driving; not about the condition or safety of my cab, and certainly not about my tokens.”

So to answer the question posed at the beginning of this story: Whether or not we are “especially religious,” for the sake of our country, and to honour the soldiers who defend it, we need to care; for inasmuch as it has been done unto Arieh Perecowicz, it has been done unto us all.

This column is in honour of all who have served, and are serving, in Canadian Forces around the world to defend the values we hold dear. It is also to offer condolences to the families of the 133 Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan — most recently, Lt. Justin Garrett Boyes, 26 and Sapper Steven Marshall of Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry, both of whom lost their lives to IEDs within days of their deployment in October.

Elizabeth James is a North Shore writer and editor.

 

http://www2.canada.com/northshorenews/news/viewpoint/story.html?id=a9df25e1-060d-468e-9122-616f0e816e82&p=1

http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/

http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/11/veterans-week-2009-and-remembrance-day.html

Veterans Affairs Canada

www.vac-acc.gc.ca

www.forces.gc.ca

http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=collections/poster

National Defence and the Canadian Forces

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/focus/nov11/video-eng.asp

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