Sunday, November 29, 2020

Monday, November 30. 2020

Today's schedule is: 

9:15 - 11:50 B Block Legal Studies
12:30 - 3:05 C Block Social and Environmental Sciences 


B Block Legal Studies
- Today, to start, we'll talk about the LGBTQ+ community in Canada and the Civil Marriage Act (which legalized same-sex marriage in Canada on July 20, 2005). In Canada, same-sex sexual activities between consenting adults were considered crimes punishable by imprisonment before 1969. That year, the Canadian government passed a bill decriminalizing private sexual acts between two people over the age of 21 – a breakthrough in treating gay men, lesbians and bisexuals equally under the law. Almost ten years later, in 1977, Quebec became the first jurisdiction in Canada to amend its provincial charter of human rights to include sexual orientation as a prohibited ground for discrimination. In 1996, the Canadian Human Rights Act was amended to specifically include sexual orientation as one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination. In Egan v. Canada (1995) the Supreme Court of Canada held that although "sexual orientation" is not listed as a ground for discrimination in section 15(1) of the Charter, it constitutes an equivalent ground on which claims of discrimination may be based. 




Finally we'll take a closer look at Human Rights and how they are enforced in Canada. We'll talk about the methods of enforcing rights guaranteed under the Charter (section 52 of the Constitution Act and Section 24 of the Charter). We'll look at the differences between "strike down", "read down" and "read in".
  1. "Striking down" involves a finding of invalidity of the entire provision or law in question
  2. In some cases, the inconsistency between a law and the Constitution arises from what the statute wrongly excludes or omits. In such cases, the remedy of “reading in” may be available which means that the validity of the legislation can be achieved through the “insertion of a handful of words, without more”
  3. “reading down” describes the remedy at a conceptual level. Reading down involves shrinking the reach of a statute to remove its unconstitutional applications or effects without regard to the explicit statutory language that would be required to achieve that result
To finish, I'll have you work on (from Friday) questions 2, 4 and 5 on page 61, questions 1, 2 and 4 on page 64 and finally have you work through the Review Your Understanding questions 1, 2 and 5 on page 83. Lastly you'll also need to complete 

Questions 1-4 on page 94:

1. Explain the difference between civil rights and human rights.
2. How do prejudice and stereotyping lead to discrimination?
3. Explain the difference between a complainant and a respondent.
4. What is the difference between intentional and unintentional discrimination?

Questions 4 & 5 from page 97:

4. Explain the concept of a poisoned work environment. Provide an example.
5. Explain the difference between accommodation and undue hardship.

AND Question 5 from page 104:

5. What types of remedies are available under human rights law?

For more on the BC Human Rights Code look at the Attorney General's Human Rights Protection site. or the BC Human Rights Commissioner or the BC Human Rights Tribunal. For more on the Canadian Human Rights Act see the Canadian Department of Justice site. For more on Human Rights in Canada see the Canadian Human Rights Commission.


C Block Social and Environmental Sciences - Double block in the Learning Commons/Library with Young today. Today we'll begin our examination of plastic pollution and the north pacific gyre. We'll have two activities to work through, one called The Physics of Flotsam (from the California Current Ecosystem at Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and the other called Marine Debris (from Esri). Here is the map from ESRI that you need to use for the activity. These will be given to you as handouts and you may work collaboratively on them this afternoon. These, along with your handout work on gyres from last week, need to be submitted to me today. 

Do you know what a Nurdle is?

10-20 million Tons of plastic ends up in our oceans every year, according to a report released by the Worldwatch Institute in 2015. The estimated number of plastic particles currently floating around in world’s oceans is 5.25 trillion. According to Greenpeace’s report Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans: “At least 267 different species are known to have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris including seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales, and fish. The scale of contamination of the marine environment by plastic debris is vast. It is found floating in all the world’s oceans, everywhere from polar regions to the equator.”

We will continue our look at this issue Thursday in class with an understanding of what the "Tragedy of the Commons" is, but also we'll try to critically examine what this concept means. Please take some time to look through the videos below to help.





To help:
SloActive Plastic Pollution
NOAA A guide to plastics in the ocean


  



 

No comments: