Randy's Government Stupidity Homepage...
Creation Date: February 08, 1996... Last modified:
Friday, 20-Jul-2012 17:25:35 EDT
June 19, 1998
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Now that this is on TRIPOD and I have LOTS of room, even though I get
too damn mad when I put entries in here, I'm gonna try to expand this page
one of these days!
Vancouver Sun, page A16, Tuesday, May 12, 1998
Hear the one about the human rights bureaucracy?
by Vaughn Palmer
Victoria - is B.C.'s human rights bureaucracy as overloaded as it says?
Or are the folks who couldn't find the time to expedite the Robin
Blencoe case unable to separate important matters from those that are
frivolous, trivial or downright ridiculous?
Take the case of the man who was denied a driver's licence because he'd
lost the entire left side of his field of vision. He complained to the
human rights authorities, alleging discrimination.
They found in his favour, ruling that the government had failed to prove
that his particular visual impairment was sufficient grounds for
withholding a driver's licence.
I know, it sounds like a bad joke: "Did you hear the one about how they
gave a driver's licence to a guy who couldn't see?" but I'm citing an
actual case to provide just one example of how the human rights
bureaucracy wastes time and resources on complaints that could be
decided on the basis of common sense.
The case began 13 years ago when the superintendent of motor vehicles
denied a driver's to a 41-year-old B.C. man who had lost half of his
field of vision as the result of a stroke. (I am not going to identify
the man because he has since died and because in my view the
authorities, not the complainant, are
responsible for letting this get out of hand.)
The man appealed the ruling, whereupon the motor vehicle branch sought
the opinion of two eye specialists, both of whom supported withholding
the licence in the strongest terms.
"He can see very little past the midline on the left side," wrote one.
"What this means is that when he is driving with his eyes on the road
straight ahead, objects located beyond 10 degrees left of centre are not
seen."
"There is no doubt in my mind that this man is a hazard both to himself
and to others in driving," wrote the other. "He will miss completely
pedestrians, objects, or vehicles approaching from the left side and I
feel he is not fit to qualify for any driving licence."
Based on those expert opinions, the superintendent again denied the
licence. The man sought further reviews in 1990 and 1992 but he was
rebuffed for the third and fourth time on grounds that he remained a
hazard to himself and others.
Unwilling to accept the verdict, in july 1992 the would-be driver filed
a human rights complaint, alleging he was a victim of discrimination on
the basis of physical disability.
Amazingly, in spite of all the expert testimony against him, he received
a sympathetic hearing.
The old human rights council -- precursor to today's human rights
tribunal and commission -- heard the case in the spring of 1994 and
issued a decision in the complainant's favor at the end of 1994. The
superintendent of motor vehicles was ordered to cease discriminating and
fined $500.
The government appealed to the Supreme Court of B.C. and lost. It
appealed again and finally, last December, a trio of appeal court judges
overturned the finding of discrimination -- ruling, more than a decade
after the licence was withheld, that the superintendent of motor
vehicles had made the right decision.
The court judgment, published recently in the Dominion Law reports,
provides several glimpses into the grotesque reasoning of the council as
it concluded that, in the name of human rights, a man who had lost half
of his field of vision should nevertheless be permitted on the roads.
The council member who decided the case complained that the
superintendent of motor vehicles had failed to produce accident
statistics or other scientific evidence to prove beyond doubt that it
was unsafe for a visually impaired person to drive a car.
But as the judges pointed out, "Few if any persons with this condition
are allowed to drive in Canada and so, of course, accident rates
regarding them will not be available."
Moreover: "There is no safe or reliable form of testing that can measure
the ability to deal with unexpected or exceptional traffic situations.
simulating such situations for testing would be unacceptably dangerous."
Of course. Anyone could see it.
"The risk," as the court noted dryly, "is obvious to the lay person and
the medical expert alike."
But not to the human rights "experts," who used up almost three years of
their own time and another three years of court time trying to prove
discrimination where none existed.
These bits of stupidity are from Reader's Digest and other places.
Less Revenue, More Cost
The cost to the federal government of collecting the Goods and Services
Tax (GST) totalled $369,223,000 for the 1994-95 fiscal year, Revenue
Canada figures show. Most of the money, $232,621,000, went to salaries
and benefits for 5,206 federal civil servants, including those staffing
the new processing center at Summerside, P.E.I.
A total of $94,495,000 went to the Quebec revenue ministry as
"compensation and start-up" to underwrite the province's merging of the
provincial sales tax with the GST.
The GST netted about $15.6 billion in fiscal 1994. By way of comparison,
it cost $85,800,000 to administer the old manufacturers' sales tax in the
last year before it was replaced by the GST on January 1, 1991.
The manufacturers' sales tax netted $17.7 billion in fiscal 1990.
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