Room 611: Thursday, February 6. 2020

Today's schedule is DCBA

D & A Block Legal Studies - Today we'll start by discussing questions 1-4 of the Canada (Attorney General) v. JTI Macdonald Corp., (2007) on page 44 in the text This deals with whether limits imposed on tobacco manufacturers’ freedom of expression by provisions of Tobacco Act and Tobacco Products Information Regulations are justified (referring to Charter sections section 2.b Freedom of Expression and section 1 Reasonable Limits).

I'd also like you to work on question 3 from page 46 which deals with the R. v. Keegstra (1990) and R. v. Butler (1992) cases. To end the class, we'll go through sections 7 - 14 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (legal rights section). We'll look at two cases: Rodriguez v British Columbia (Attorney General), 1993 - which deals with Section 7 of the Charter (life, liberty and security of the person) and R. v. Tessling, 2004 - which deals with Section 8 of the Charter (search and seizure). For more information on the fight in Canada for the right to die on one's own terms look at the CBC In Depth site on the Sue Rodriguez case. In 2011, Gloria Taylor from Kelowna filed a case in B.C. Supreme Court to grant her the right to a doctor-assisted suicide. More info on this case can be found here.

In February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Carter v. Canada that parts of the Criminal Code would need to change to satisfy the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The parts that prohibited medical assistance in dying would no longer be valid. So in June 2016, the Parliament of Canada passed federal legislation that allows eligible Canadian adults to request medical assistance in dying.

C Block Criminology - Although police-reported crime in Canada (measured by the Crime Severity Index CSI) increased for the fourth year in a row in 2018, the national CSI was 17% lower in 2018 than a decade earlier. Of note....the police-reported crime rate and the CSI include only those incidents that come to the attention of police, either through reporting by the public or through pro-active policing. Results from the most recent General Social Survey on Victimization found that just under one-third (31%) of violent and non-violent incidents were reported to the police.

Since 1962, Statistics Canada has collected information on all criminal incidents reported by Canadian police services through its annual Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey. In addition to the UCR, Statistics Canada also collects information on victims of crime through the General Social Survey (GSS) on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization), which is conducted every five years. Unlike the UCR, the GSS on Victimization collects data on self-reported experiences with crime which include incidents that may or may not have been brought to the attention of the police. These complementary surveys are the primary sources of data on crime and victimization in Canada.

Highlights of the Stats Can Report show:

The change in the CSI in 2018 was the result of higher police-reported rates of numerous offences. Ordered by their relative impact on the CSI, these offences include fraud (+13%); level 1 sexual assault, meaning without a weapon or evidence of bodily harm (+15%); shoplifting of $5,000 or under (+14%); and theft over $5,000 (+15%). These increases were partially offset by decreases for some other offences, including lower rates of breaking and entering (-1%) and robbery (-3%)

Today I'll have you work on three questions about crime trends:

Using pages 37 to 46 in the CRIM textbook outline and explain the crime patterns in relation to ecology, firearms, social class, age, gender and race.
What is a chronic offender and what is the significance of Marvin Wolfgang's discovery (why is identifying the chronic offender important)?
How would you explain the gender differences in the crime rate (why do you think males are more violent than females)?

B Block Human Geography - Today we'll look at the Key Question: Where Is the World’s Population Distributed? Human beings are not distributed uniformly across Earth’s surface. We can understand how population is distributed by examining two basic properties - concentration and density. Today we'll examine where populations are concentrated looking at the concept of ecumene. Lastly we'll look at density in terms of arithmetic, physiological and agricultural forms. You've got three questions to answer for me today:

Why isn’t North America one of the four major population clusters?
On the map in the week 2 package...use the maps on page 47 to prepare a sketch map that shows non-ecumene and very sparsely inhabited lands (remember map basics!)
In terms of food supply, which combination of measures of density is most important when considering whether a country’s population is too large? Why?