The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 28

The City Editorial page TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 1998 C4 THE OTTAWA CITIZEN OUR TOWN JL 1 1 Charles Gordon Window on a cry for peace 'Si O.X tV.f. 4 i Mary Jane Sterne has been a dedicated supporter of the United Way for more than 30 years. In the 1960s she struggled to set up a program for unwed mothers in Kingston. Eventually, she found support from the United Way. In 1991, she increased her local involvement, as an account executive, then as chair of the local business division, the high technology division and the home-based business division.

Ms. Sterne, who runs a human resources consulting business, has also offered her experience to help strengthen relations between the United Way and its staff. She was recently honoured with the Ottawa-Carleton United Way President's Award. Ottawa Citizen photograph by Bruno Schlumberger ridge building needs openness a matter of months, a campaign promise by Regional Chair Bob Chiarelli has blos somed into the promise of a new era of bridge building between Ottawa-Carleton and the Outaouais. That is good.

Bridges The peace demonstration, long a part of the Ottawa cityscape, has not so much changed as been changed by the times. When the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade began picketing military trade shows in 1989, the Cold War was still an emotional presence. The '80s "were like the glorious heyday for the anti-nuclear and the peace movement in some ways," says Richard Sanders, co-ordinator of COAT, "but it's become much more mainstream now." With the general feeling of "war is over," demonstrations make less public impact now. But the organizers find reasons to be encouraged. Rain made a mess of much of COAT's weekend campaign against the air show and associated military trade shows and a demonstration held downtown Sunday night looked very much like any other the usual small crowd, the usual parade of speakers to the microphone.

Mr. Sanders, however, was happy. "I wasn't discouraged at all. I'm really encouraged," he said yesterday. It was the networking, the meeting of new people, that pleased him.

"Even if it poured rain the whole time and everything was completely cancelled it still would have been a great success," Mr. Sanders said. That's a new way of measuring the demo. Everybody knows by now that the speeches are not for the crowd, since the crowd is committed already. The speeches are for the television cameras.

But if the television cameras don't show up and only one was at Sunday's vigil the speeches make much difference either. 1 A fairly new Ottawa wrinkle is moving the location from Parliament Hill to the back of the Government Conference Centre, across Colonel By from the Westin Hotel, where the objects of the demonstration in this case, air force generals from Latin America are staying or dining. There was a big anti-Mike Harris demo there at the time of the Montfort Hospital fuss last year. The idea is that the targets will look out the window, count the crowd and be frightened, or at least impressed. Sunday night the crowd was about 100 and hardly anybody was looking out the windows.

But the networking was a success, and some of the speeches, if anyone was listening, contained a real eloquence. "I saw the air show in Guatemala," said one speaker, "when the helicopters were throwing bombs." His voice was amplified within an inch of its life, but no faces showed at the windows of the Westin and the few people watching from outside the hotel looked more like university students than Latin American generals. A little bit of Colonel By had been blocked off with orange pylons. Traffic was not disrupted. Three policemen stood by.

The speakers said things like "We demand the punishment of the murderers" and the signs said things like STOP SELLING GUNS TO EL SALVADOR. Demonstrators carried white crosses, made of paper and cardboard, each carrying the name of a country in which human rights violations were taking place. A little girl ran through the crowd making airplane noises, playing with a placard in the shape of an airplane, labelled ANGEL OF DEATH. "Why do we still look at air shows as fun?" a speaker asked. There was the moment of silence, the laying of wreaths, all of it seeming a bit out of date at a time when most people in our world consider the world to be at peace.

Perhaps, Sanders conceded, there should have been a mention, speaking of the arms trade, of India and Pakistan and their nuclear tests. The people who organize and attend demonstrations are, almost by definition, optimists, because they think in terms of taking action rather than sitting back and quietly complaining. They think what they say will matter. So it is not surprising that veteran demo-goers would enthuse about the turnout and marvel at this demonstration's newfangled technology. This consisted of a machine that could project a video (oddly, a National Film Board documentary) onto the blank back wall of the Conference Centre, to be appreciated by the demonstrators and any Latin American militarist who might be looking out his or her hotel room window.

Once it got dark enough, this was attempted, the surprisingly small image hitting the wall just about the Government of Canada sign that said: "Unauthorized vehicles will be towed away at owner's risk and expense." The documentary, featuring children's art images of war from Guatemala and El Salvador, was powerful, although pale in the twilight. The narration bounced off the walls, but a block away you couldn't hear it over the sound of the tour buses. Moreover, such a bridge could be used to route heavy truck traffic around downtown Ottawa. The current situation, with 18-wheelers thundering down King Edward Avenue by the minute, has long been considered intolerable, but there have been no other options available. In addition, the suggestion that the federal government could pass ownership of the bridges to a bridge authority is promising.

The National Capital Commission has long stood as a barrier to public dialogue and public accountability when it comes to bridges. But such an authority would only be an improvement if the lessons of the past had really been learned. An ability to be responsive to the public through open meetings and public accountability is crucial. And that is why the series of closed-door, high-level meetings leading to this point are of some concern. So far, public accountability does not appear to be high on Mr.

Chiarelli's list. If Kanata Mayor Nicholds balked at learning a group of people in suits was discussing her community's future without her knowledge, imagine how Kanata residents feel? Such stumbles along the way could trip up even a well thought-out proposal. And that would be a shame, because there are bridges yet to built in the National Capital east-end interprovincial bridge have much to recommend them. This is what has happened so far: Early this year, Mr. Chiarelli set up a meeting between mayors and regional government officials on both sides of the river to discuss the possibility of an inter-provincial bridge linking.

It was one of the first, and one of the most congenial, of such meetings in recent history. That was the beginning. Since then, the officials have heard from private companies about how a private-public partnership might work similar to the way the link to Prince Edward Island was built. Federal cabinet ministers John Manley and Marcel Masse have also met with the group and, since then, there has been talk of an interprovincial bridge, or transportation authority, which would be responsible for bridges and other interprovincial transportation issues. There have also been suggestions that the federal government might become involved in building a new bridge in the east end.

So far, so good. There seems to be little opposition to a bridge in the east end by local residents, which is often the most difficult part of the exercise. The involvement of the federal government and the possibility of a private partnership, partly funded through the use of tolls, makes the project seem not only feasible but entirely likely in the near future. and inter-provincial transportation in general have long been the source of animosity, anger and public frustration on both sides of the Ottawa River. However, if not for the leak of information to a newspaper about the continuing talks, most members of the public and many of their locally elected officials would have no idea what is in the works.

That is bad. Kanata Mayor Merle Nicholds responded to reports that her city was being looked at as a second bridge site with a flat no, saying she had not even been consulted. One lesson that should have been learned from divisive bridge-building exercises of the past, is that it is crucial to be accountable to the public every step of the way. Otherwise, bridge building can quickly devolve into bridge burning. Mr.

Chiarelli, a recent refugee from Queen's Park, has taken a premierial approach to bridges and other issues an approach that does not meet any standards of open, accountable local government. That said, many of the ideas that have sprung from Mr. Chiarelli's campaign promise of an Gender irrelevant when judging a judge By lynne Cohen Every lucid person knows respect for the law is primordial in a free society but inculcating such respect among citizens is getting increasingly difficult in the face of absurdly lenient criminal sentencing, unconscionably long trial-waiting lists and prohibitively expensive legal services. Less obvious and a far greater threat to our justice system than these glaring bureaucratic cancers is the idea that the gender of judges does, or ought to, make a whit of difference to anything at all. While it is acceptable, perhaps even laudable, for society to pursue equal proportions of male and female doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers and secretaries professions that require personal, intimate one-on-one interactions before reasonable, healthy and fair decisions are reached judges absolutely do not and should not fit into this modern, simplistic demanded to read the impeccable, well-organized evidence.

Instead, in her uniquely female judicial perspective, she made an obviously unworkable order, full of inconsistencies and contradictions, clearly a disaster for the children. It is noteworthy that this woman judge made a shocking and flippant remark during the hearing. After listening to how the ex-wife who had abandoned her family one month before the particular incident being complained about had exerted extreme and gratuitous financial pressure on her ex-husband and children, the judge simply shrugged her shoulders: "Well, what can you expect, the wife was hurting emotionally." If we don't challenge the contemporary beliefs that judges should be appointed on anything but merit, and that female judges require special treatment and defence on the grounds that their decisions reflect a unique perspective on the law, we will undoubtedly pay a heavy price. Lawyers will justifiably start demanding to pick judges the way they pick juries. Every ethnic minority plaintiff or defendant will have the right to choose their judges on the same grounds.

And the entire system of justice will fall into greater disrepute. Lynne Cohen is a Nepean writer and non-practising lawyer. Federal judicial affairs adviser Joanne Senecal said a 50-50 gender split is "ideal." And University of Manitoba law professor Karen Busby, concerned about "complacency," said: "We still need to be vigilant about the appointment of women there could be an attitude that we've got enough Writing in the 1993 CBA study which surveyed only 132 federal and provincial judges Justice Wilson stated that the "major" problem for women judges "is the 'old guard' who have no idea how to relate to women as professionals; they (male judges) feel uncomfortable and threatened and must belittle their female colleagues in order to bolster their own sense of security." Anyone who accepts holus-bolus this gross generalization probably believes that females can't have anti-male biases, and that elephants can fly- In and out of court 10 times in the past 18 months helping my friend fight a horrifying custody war, I have witnessed the judicial work of many judges, both women and men. In fairness, each gender has taken turns making ridiculous, illegal rulings. The sad truth, however, is that the entire agonizing mess which continues to hurt the children terribly could have been resolved the first time we went to court in April 1997, had the female judge used a few hours of the private professional time she paradigm.

In a class of their own, judges must be impartial at all times. They must be seen to be completely neutral, nonpartisan and utterly rational. "Justice is blind" is not merely a whimsical ideal, but a fundamental principle upon which modern states depend for the allegiances of their citizens. Unfortunately, in Canada today, the insidious and dangerous notion that more women judges are needed in order to redress an historic imbalance is pervasive. Some of Canada's top female legalists are not even embarrassed to publicly argue the point.

"Will women judges really make a difference?" asked Madame Justice Bertha Wilson, this country's first woman Supreme Court of Canada judge, rhetorically, in a 1990 speech. "Yes," she answered her own question emphatically, thereby initiating this nonsensical national trend. In a 1993 Canadian Bar Association study which she headed, Justice Wilson complained that women "are under-represented on almost every court in Canada," and that only "modest" changes were apparent in recent federal appointments. According to a May 22 article "In defence of female judges," 39 per cent of Justice Minister Anne McLellan's appointees have been women, "though she has been criticized for not choosing women to fill two recent vacancies on the country's top court." How to contact us For suggestions about photographs for this page, inquiries about freelance articles or comments on our editorials, call City Editorial Page Editor Randall Denley at 596-3756. The e-mail address is rdenleythecitizen.southam.ca and the fax number is 726-1198..