Number 102 April, 1998

Immigrants Built Canada -- Can They Destroy It?

"Almost 60 per cent of the 60,000 students in Vancouver's elementary and secondary schools use another language, mostly Chinese for conversation at home ... nearly 80 per cent of the students reported they were taking English-as-a-second-language." (Globe and Mail, March 3, 1998) In Hong Kong however, three quarters of schools have recently been ordered to instruct students in Cantonese exclusively. As for "teaching some subjects in English, the Government is down-playing the idea. Officials insist that this will only be allowed for fringe subjects such as typewriting and metalwork." (South China Morning Post, March 14, 1998) Meanwhile, Sri Lankan president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, "has caused an uproar - not because of what she said but because she delivered the speech in English. Senior Buddhist priests and several nationalist organisations have demanded an apology." (South China Morning Post, February 27, 1998) Is it fair to assume then, that while nationalistic "source countries" root out and eradicate English wherever it's found, our own excessive ESL costs will scarcely lessen?

Canada's immigration review committee's timorous recommendation that English/French proficiency MIGHT play a role in FUTURE immigration was vigorously denounced, primarily by the South Asian (East Indian) and East Asian (Asian) communities, and attendant wet nurses. B.C.'s Attorney General and (just coincidentally) Multiculturalism Minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, fretted, "these very badly flawed proposals ... would make it impossible for billionaires seeking to invest in B.C. to enter Canada." (Globe and Mail, February 10, 1998) Nothing personal, but this is sheer silliness. Canada pioneered the concept of selling citizenship to the highest bidder -- no questions asked. In his despair, Mr. Dosanjh must have forgotten that "two years after it was launched with great fanfare, British Columbia's immigrant-investor fund has successfully processed only 32 people, and has yet to invest a single dollar of their money." (Globe and Mail, March 3, 1998) The diverse beneficiaries of Canada's exorbitant language training programs have chosen to ignore (or fail to comprehend?) the Legislative Review Committee's Recommendation # 25 in its entirety: "We emphasize the ability of immigrants to function in French or English before coming to Canada; if they cannot do so, we expect them to make a financial contribution to their own language upgrading." (Not Just Numbers, A Canadian Framework for Future Immigration, 1997) Billionaire or not, with "up to 50% of those entering our country unable to speak in either language." (Toronto Sun, March 3, 1998) The immigrant lobby won't tolerate the prospect of contributing in any way to their own language training costs. All this is dramatically at odds with the mandatory image of immigrants toiling industriously to bring Canada up to speed - particularly once we discover that, somehow or other, Canada is getting people who cannot read or write at all. "Some of our newly arrived parents do not have literacy skills in their own language." (Providing Successful Transitions for Newcomers, Toronto District School Board Submission to Ministerial Consultation, March 3, 1998)

"The Metro Toronto School Board spent $63-million on ESL programs in 1990. ... That was eight years ago ... and - trust us - the problem is far worse now." (Toronto Sun, March 4, 1998) You might imagine that the minority lobby had overstepped the bounds of credulity with this monumental blunder, making it difficult (if not impossible) to maintain the fiction that immigration "enriches" us. Perish the thought! Never! Tearful protestations, demonstrations and accusations of racism have left Quebecoise Immigration Minister, Lucienne Robillard shaken - if not stirred - and she is deep sixing the language recommendation altogether. "Robillard told the Commons the proposals are 'excessive,' and will be shelved by cabinet." (Toronto Sun, March 13, 1998) In short, the Canadian taxpayer had better get used to the idea that up to 50% of new immigrants will not speak English/French (although no one has guaranteed the rate will REMAIN at 50%) and, should we fail to fork over the necessary funds, we are de facto racists. As per ordinaire, the issue is not about crippling fees or diminished expectations. It's about racism. Have the Quebecois politicians running this country [into the ground] forgotten what the politics of language and preference cost La Belle Province over 30 years?

Countless corporations simply abandoned Quebec to its cultural and linguistic eccentricities. Even Quebec's chauvinistic language cops' knees buckled in the face of determined Chinese opposition and cries of "le racisime!". Linguistic toadying already costs Canadians billions of dollars. Are intimidated politicians now determined to accommodate scores of UNOFFICIAL languages? (Are these same politicians outraged at the very suggestion that Canadians are not "a people"?) After being dangled out of a helicopter by one leg for a couple of hours, just about everybody realizes that expecting the beneficiary to contribute something - anything - toward English-as-a-second-language costs is not only a threat to national security, but just exactly what you'd expect from an oppressively racist country like Canada.

With a chronic unemployment rate around 9% and a new study showing that "almost 10% of Canada's population is living off welfare," (Toronto Sun, March 31, 1998) no doubt we'll be looking back fondly on our current taxation rate of over 50% all too soon because that money for ESL must come from somewhere.

Multiculturalism is a Rotting Turtle

Animal welfare inspectors Debby Hunt and Kathy Kellner found "a pair of dismembered and disease-ridden, two-foot-long Florida soft-shell turtles [at Big Land Farms in Toronto's Chinatown]. Bits of them were being chopped off and sold as food. When the two unarmed and uniformed officers tried to remove the turtles for emergency veterinary care, they said they were accosted and confined in their truck for half an hour. 'We were out on the sidewalk and I was grabbed by the arm twice by a woman. One time she twisted the arm right back,' said Hunt, who has worked for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for seven years. [Like a page from the Red Guard, an angry mob surrounded the truck; one person sat on the hood while two men tore the door off the back to look for the turtles.] 'We were not allowed to move. They were slamming and banging their hands on the windows beside us... We called 911.' ... One of the turtle's whole face was rotted away ... sometimes body parts are cut off to eat [in this case, two legs had been removed from the living animal], and they're just thrown back into a dirty tank. Employees of the food market refused to comment." (Toronto Star, February 13, 1998) Between bouts of dismemberment, the turtles were "kept in water for a week without a resting site, which caused them to struggle to keep their heads above the surface." (Globe and Mail, February 27, 1998)

After a month, the male turtle was destroyed because it was "so injured and diseased. ... The female is clinging to life at Metro Zoo." (Toronto Sun, March 13, 1998) In San Francisco, identical concerns are eliciting a caring and sensitive response -- to Chinese cultural expectations. "To challenge these traditions is racist and culturally arrogant, merchants and their supporters say. Paul Wartelle, a San Francisco attorney representing 12 Chinese market owners named in a lawsuit by animal rights groups, said his clients were being singled out. 'Are animals raised in factory farms and killed in slaughterhouses really treated more morally? [Well let's see -- they're usually dead before the process of disarticulation begins] The answer is no,' he said. Yet, 'Who gets sued? The Chinese.' Culture and race have nothing to do with it, said Eric Mills, an Oakland activist who works with the New York based Fund for Animals and his own group, Action for Animals. He was motivated to fight the live animal sales by the conditions the animals are subjected to ... some, he said, are skinned alive. 'It's one of the most horrible things I've ever seen in my life.' ... Being labelled a racist infuriates Mills, who said he had worked against California's Proposition 187. [Isn't diversity great?] ... For Chinese merchants, the issue is equally straightforward: their customers want fresh food. When they can see the animals living and breathing, they know they're not buying spoiled meat." (San Francisco Examiner, March 14, 1998) If previous experience or cultural values mean that merchants are likely to cheat you, why not shop somewhere more reliable?

If "freshness" is a concern, why buy a creature rotting-on-the-hoof? Chinese medicine is purportedly based on the principle of mimetics (you ingest the "essence" of the animal). Again, what benefit may be realized in partaking of a tormented, putrefying creature, dying by degrees? A Vancouver reporter describes a picture "too gruesome to run in a family newspaper. It shows a large soft-shelled turtle sitting on a bed of ice outside a Vancouver seafood market. Not only has its shell been torn away, but about a pound of meat has been sliced from its back. The turtle is very much alive -- and waiting for the next customer. ... [Ingrid Pollak of the humane society says,] 'They slice a piece of meat off and then put the animal back, wriggling. It's just like taking a pig, cutting the ham out and then putting the live pig back on the shelf.' She says British studies on soft-shelled turtles show that, even though they're cold-blooded reptiles, they experience the same degree of pain as mammals. 'It's even more extreme with turtles ... because of their metabolism, they die very slowly.'" (Vancouver Province, March 22, 1998) In Toronto, turtles will undoubtedly continue to be dismembered in stages as authorities (once again) lack the will to enforce laws devised by a once-cohesive society.

No animal cruelty charges have been laid, although three persons appeared on charges ranging from mischief to obstructing and assaulting an officer. Years ago, when a horrified Florida motorist ran over and crushed the shell of a turtle, he rushed the creature to a veterinarian, who did what he could before passing the beast along to a friend who owned a body shop. Two years later the turtle was back -- being refitted for his enlarged fiberglass carapace.

Apocalypso

The execution-style murder of Elrick ("Ricky" "Tuffy") Christian at the 1996 Caribana parade (in which 3 bystanders were variously wounded or paralysed) has resulted in a 'not guilty' verdict for triggerman Tyrone Edwards. "Not a single Canadian eyewitness came forward to help police in their investigation of the 1996 Caribana slaying despite the thousands who were present." (Globe and Mail, January 31, 1998) The fact that Mr. Edwards emptied a gun into Christian, coming back, not once, but twice to deliver point-blank salvos, weighed against him no more than the fact that "Mr. Edwards fled the country after the shooting ... and took steps to change his appearance" (Globe and Mail, February 28, 1998). The trial took an odd twist when a woman 'who can't be named', testified that she was able to identify Tyrone Edwards "as the gunman because his face came to her in a dream. ... The woman told the jury she saw Edwards dump the gun in a garbage can and ... a blonde, shirtless man with a swastika tattoo on his back grabbed it and fled. She agreed a Nazi at Caribana was an odd sight." (Toronto Sun, February 11, 1998) At the time of the slaying, the victim was mourned as a wonderful father and an all-round great guy! Deputy Police Chief Robert Molyneaux even opined that, "These were just trouble-making punks who would have done what they did in the middle of the Santa Claus parade." (Toronto Star, August 5, 1996) The essential dishonesty of this was evident at trial, by which time the gun was identified as one previously used in a nightclub shooting, a McDonald's heist and a bank robbery, and the victim had transmogrified into someone 'well-known to York Regional Police as a violent, dangerous man'. (Toronto Sun, January 29, 1998)

Indeed, the threat of the Malvern Posse (triggerman Edwards was "not necessarily" a member of the gang) and the feuding which led to the Caribana shooting were of such concern that police "'were directed to carry our guns' when off duty, testified York Regional Police Det.Norm Miles, adding he's still concerned for his safety." (Toronto Sun, February 5, 1998) "Nobody should be too shocked by an acquittal where somebody dies and other people are wounded, say some Toronto lawyers. ... Assistant Crown attorney Calvin Barry says he understands how the public can be frustrated with some verdicts but points out a prosecutor's job is to seek the truth." (Toronto Sun, March 6, 1998) In a curious postscript, "Trevor Edwards, 28, brother of the man cleared in the Caribana killing, ... was sentenced to three months in jail for obstructing justice ... [Edwards had previously 'demolished' an Old City Hall] courtroom, and assaulted Metro cop Bill White and court officer Gary Summerton in an escape bid after his bail was revoked in a separate 1995 incident. ... He was sentenced for producing a bogus letter ... indicating Edwards was a U of T student in an attempt to delay sentencing until after Christmas. ... Prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt said courts must impose tough sentences to deter people from lying in court. 'The police simply don't have the resources to check up on every submission made in court.'" (Toronto Sun, March 27, 1998)

Just How DID He Intend to Make His Getaway?

"Toronto police warn professional South American pickpockets are prowling the city. 'It's an epidemic,' said Det. Dan Nealon of 52 Division." (Toronto Sun, February 2, 1998) It may be an epidemic, but not a very new one. "Three more people face charges in a rash of 'distraction' robberies. ... [These] robberies involve two or more people, one of whom will divert a victim's attention while an accomplice steals wallets, luggage, packages or anything else worthwhile." (Toronto Sun, August 27, 1997) "The thieves, who are usually well-dressed, use tactics such as spraying victims with ketchup or mustard and dropping coats on purses laying on floors. 'It happens in a matter of seconds,' said Nealon. [Two of the arrested, Guillermo Aguayo Retamal, 57 and Maximo Araujo, 35, shipped 20 coats realized from a day-light break-in at Planet Hollywood on Christmas Eve to a confederate in the American Midwest] ... Aguayo, a refugee claimant, claims he'd be persecuted by Chilean police if returned. Canada Immigration is trying to determine [the similarly named] Araujo's status. Araujo was cornered in a downtown hotel restaurant by security after stealing a woman's purse. [The enterprising gentleman] ... dropped his pants and defecated on the floor in a bid to escape." (Toronto Sun, February 2, 1998)

Deadbeat Dad Sent Back to Jamaica

"A deadbeat criminal dad who fathered 12 children with seven different women is being turfed out of the country. ... [Disc jockey] Ainsley Bancroft David, 39, was ordered deported to 'his native Jamaica yesterday by an Immigration and Refugee Board because of criminal activity ... which includes convictions for carrying a concealed weapon , two counts of possession of narcotics, sexual assault and assault causing bodily harm. [We can well understand the 'concealed weapon' and 'assault causing bodily harm' charges in this particular case] 'He has not married any of the mothers of his children,' board member Shirley Wales ruled. 'Nor has he provided consistent support to any of them.'" (Toronto Sun, March 24, 1998)

Conspicuous Consumption: Immigration Can Kill You

Since we reported Health/Immigration Canada's woefully inadequate TB screening process in November, the predictable results are beginning to show like shadows on a tubercular lung. "More than 1,800 people will have to undergo tuberculosis testing next week after a Scarborough high school [Agincourt Collegiate] student was diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease." (Toronto Sun, January 13, 1998). "Tuberculosis tests will be carried out on 200 Revenue Canada employees next week after a co-worker at a Town Centre Ct. office tower contracted the disease." (Toronto Sun, February 11, 1998) "More than 20 people who attend St. Patrick's Adult Day School in Ottawa are being monitored for signs of tuberculosis after the highly contagious infection was discovered in a student. ... The woman, who had emigrated from the Philippines several years ago ... is being monitored daily by a homecare worker. [Let us hope the admitting immigration officer has offered to pick up the tab] ... The disease, normally found in lungs or lymph nodes, has become so rare in North America that doctors no longer vaccinate children against it." (Ottawa Citizen, January 30, 1998) TB is a reportable disease. When students or co-workers are advised to report, it may come as a rude shock, but how were concerns over an emerging AIDS epidemic and tainted blood scandals handled by Canadian authorities? Well the crucial thing was to save their bacon, ensure that the gay community was not "scape-goated" and - until the lawsuits started rolling in - deny that there WAS a problem. During the 1950s and 60s, emigrants were subject to rigorous and recurring medical examinations before they qualified for admission to Canada.

The question of "DPs and Disease" occupied pride of place in newspapers at a time when Canadians actually believed that fit and healthy immigrants were in some way, superior. This instinct for self preservation came to be seen as "not quite nice" and fell into disrepute about the time the immigration axis shifted to precisely those areas of the world most crippled by debilitating, wasting diseases. One wonders in vain why the Government of Canada would neither alert Canadians, nor recommend BCG vaccinations, confronted as we are by the double-barrelled threat of a global TB epidemic, and a collapsing domestic health care system. Canada's public health strategy consists of maintaining the same indictable silence, while presumably waiting for infection rates among the Canadian-born to match those of newcomers -- and they almost certainly will -- to do otherwise could very well hurt someone's feelings. Nor has the threat posed by tuberculosis gone unnoticed. Last September, Toronto's medical officer of health, Dr. David McKeown warned, "the conditions for such resurgence already exist in Toronto. These include: high levels of immigration from countries where TB is prevalent (78% of cases are foreign born), increasing prevalence of HIV infection, [AIDS is the leading cause of premature death among men in Toronto] crowding in drops-ins and shelters for the homeless who are at increased risk, and increasing poverty.

Currently 15 per cent of TB cases are resistant to commonly used antibiotics, 9 percent are known to be infected with HIV, and nine percent are homeless. ... Based on the combined 1997 budgets of the seven current municipalities, public health represents 1.7% of the expenditures of the new Toronto." (Threats to Health in the Changing City: Choices for the Future, September 9, 1997) What's wrong with this picture? High immigration was supposed to eliminate poverty and homelessness. Aren't we equally assured that robust immigrants are far healthier than doddering old Canadians? Perhaps 'tuberculosis management opportunities' will eventually rival ESL as a growth sector in Canada's mighty immigration industry!

The identical trend has been noted in Australia, where MP Pauline Hanson, "accused successive governments of letting people infected with hepatitis B and tuberculosis migrate to Australia over the past two decades. 'I put it to you that rather than discriminate against seriously infected foreigners, our governments chose to discriminate against its own citizens and endanger all Australians,' she told a meeting in Brisbane. 'To add insult to injury, they further endangered us by not embarking on a drive for immunisation to protect us because to do so would have meant disclosing what they exposed us to.' ... 'We must keep our young people, especially students sharing school equipment and things like musical instruments, from being exposed to diseases imported from overseas.'" (South China Morning Post, March 23, 1998) "A sudden rise in new tuberculosis cases has prompted fears of a resurgence of the killer disease in Hong Kong. The rate of increase has doubled over the past year." (South China Morning Post, March 23, 1998) Australia (population 18,031,000 in 1995) "has an immigration quota for the fiscal year to June 30, 1998, of 68,000." (Toronto Star, March 20, 1998) Compare Canada (population 29,600,000 in 1995) which (again) plans to make room for 200,000 - 225,000 immigrants during 1998.

"The infection rate among foreign-born residents under the age of 30 is 20 times that of Canadian-born residents. ... People born outside of Canada accounted for 77 per cent of TB cases in Montreal, although only 23 per cent of the population is foreign-born. ... [Montreal public health researcher, Dr. Terry Tannenbaum, ventures,] 'It's important to treat every case of tuberculosis, so we need programs that are adapted to cultural diversity and which ensure that drugs are free.'" (Globe and Mail, March 21, 1998) The drugs aren't really "free" though - are they? One might as well say that ESL programs adapted to cultural diversity are "free" too. "During the past decade, rates of TB among Canadian-born residents have continued to decline. ... On the basis of the population in the midpoint census year of 1991, [there was] a decline in annual incidence from 5.4 to 3.3 per 100,000. During the same period, the number of cases among foreign-born residents rose from ... 18.8 to 24.4 per 100,000. ... [Globally,] estimates for 1990 of TB incidence, which takes into account under-reporting, were 237 per 100,000 in Southeast Asia, 191 in Africa and 127 in Latin America. About 95% of the 8 million cases reported annually occur in the developing world. ... Over the past 12 years the number of immigrants to Canada has more than doubled, from 84,302 in 1985 to the current level of about 250,000. At the same time, the predominant places of birth of these new Canadians has shifted substantially.

Europe was the major source in the 1960s, whereas Asia and increasingly Africa and Latin America, regions with high rates of TB, have been the major sources in the 1990s. ... It is therefore not surprising that the epidemiology of TB in Canada increasingly reflects patterns of immigration in terms of not only the countries of origin of the immigrants, but also their chosen destinations. ... The chest radiography screening of applicants required by Immigration Canada eliminates people with currently active pulmonary TB. [As was stressed in the November newsletter, this "technology" is widely viewed as clownishly outmoded -- the sputum test is preferred by nations that are serious about eradicating the disease. The chest X-ray identifies only about 70% of lungs ravaged by advanced pulmonary - and extremely contagious - tuberculosis. The thoroughly discredited X-ray is unable to detect infected, but currently inactive cases, nor will it identify non-respiratory strains like adenitis, genitourinary, abdominal or bone and joint varieties. About the best that can be said for the chest X-ray, is that countries which rely upon such an ineffectual method will never have to officially admit to hosting an epidemic - because they will never really know exactly how many people are actually infected.] ... In southern Alberta the mean period between arrival in Canada and diagnosis was 11.2 years ... in Montreal 33.2% of the foreign-born residents with TB presented within 2 years of their arrival in Canada and 56.3% within the first 5 years. These data suggest an earlier onset of disease in Montreal than in southern Alberta." (Globalization of tuberculosis, E. Anne Fanning, MD, CMAJ, March 10, 1998)

It is tempting to speculate whether an infectious person manages to come into contact with the same number of people during 2 busy years in densely populated Montreal as his counterpart might do over the course of 11 years in sparsely populated southern Alberta. In Montreal, it is people supposedly in their most productive years who suffer "the highest age-specific rate for foreign-born residents (62.8 per 100,000) occurred among those aged 15-29 years. For Canadian-born residents, the highest age-specific rate (10.0 per 100,000) occurred among those aged 65 and over. ... Among the patients born outside Canada 24.0% were from Haiti (mean annual rate 133.5 per 100,000) and 14.3% from Vietnam (mean annual rate 137.0 per 100,000)." (Epidemiology of tuberculosis in Montreal, Paul Rivest MD, MSc; Terry Tannenbaum, MD, MPH; Lucie Bedard, MSc, MPH, CMAJ, March 10, 1998) During a five year study of new TB cases in southern Alberta, "immigrants to Canada accounted for 70.6% of the cases. On the basis of a mid-study estimate that foreign-born residents accounted for 16% of the population of southern Alberta, the annual incidence of TB in this group was 25.8 per 100,000, which is more than 21 times greater than the annual incidence among Canadian-born non-aboriginal residents (1.2 per 100,000). ... Of the [infected] immigrants ... 73.4% were born in Asia ... China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Indian subcontinent. [By 1996, these countries represented five of our top immigration sources.] A 1990 survey "estimates that up to 600 people per 100,000 in China had some form of tuberculosis ... in India today, every second adult is infected with the tuberculosis bacterium." (WHO Annual Report, 1997)] ... Compliance with preventative therapy may also be particularly poor among Asian immigrants. ... The mean interval between arrival in Canada and diagnosis of disease was shorter for those from Asia (9.1 years) ... than those born in other regions (17.2 years). ... This study has shown that the increased risk of TB among immigrants persists for many years after their arrival in Canada. ... There was a trend for a longer period to diagnosis among younger immigrants.

[Hardly encouraging news for Canadian schoolchildren who might attend day-care and graduate from high school alongside classmates who may or may not become infectious at any time] ... The risk of TB for immigrants is the same as prevails in their countries of origin. ... It can therefore be anticipated that the expected increase in the proportion of foreign-born residents in the Canadian population will be associated with an increase in the incidence of TB." (Tuberculosis among immigrants: interval from arrival in Canada to diagnosis - a 5-year study in southern Alberta, Robert L. Cowie, MD; Jill W. Sharpe, BN, CMAJ, March 10, 1998)

"Citizenship and Immigration Canada protects the safety and public health of Canadians through the medical examination of all immigrants." (CIC Report on Plans and Priorities 1998-99, March 26, 1998) "22 countries account for 80 per cent of the world's tuberculosis cases ... Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran , Mexico, Myanmar [Burma], Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam." (Vancouver Sun, March 19, 1998) Canada's top ten source countries for immigration in 1996 were: Hong Kong, India, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, U.S., Iran, U.K........... (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) "A study released by the World Health Organization last October said that eruptions of antibiotic-resistant TB in "hot zones" on at least four continents threatened the global spread of virulent new strains of the disease. Hot zones ... were found in India, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Argentina, Dominican Republic and Ivory Coast." (Edmonton Journal, March 25, 1998) "Multi-resistant TB drugs can cost up to $250,000 U.S.. per patient to treat, with a cure rate of only 50%." (Toronto Sun, October 23, 1997) "Russia has the dubious distinction of harbouring the most TB cases in the developed world and openly resisting WHO recommendations for diagnosis and treatment. ... Russian health officials, for example, insist on requiring costly chest X-rays to diagnose TB, rather than sputum samples. ... The rising number of TB infections in previously low incidence countries to which Russians have been emigrating has made health official's worst fears a reality -- the epidemic can and will transcend borders and social classes. [This ought to please the Marxists, they've been looking for an equalizing tool to eliminate distinctions for some considerable time] ... The rate in this country of 148 million is 75 per 100,000." (Toronto Star, March 25, 1998) It's unlikely that Russia's example -- allowing a health care system to crumble -- will serve as a cautionary tale for Canadian officials; it's been a very long while since Canada troubled itself with the health and well being of Canadians.

Tuberculosis through the years

(Santa and child) From 1924	(French BCG stamp) From 1934	(Santa and reindeer) From 1930	(French TB regime poster) 1932
	(16 page pamphlet) 1920	(32 page pamphlet) 1881

John Bunyan called tuberculosis "the captain of all these men of death"; it has variously been known as the white plague and more familiar to us consumption (referring to what happens to infected lungs). Tuberculosis is so ancient as to show up in the bones of Egyptian mummies and illustrations from the Middle Ages show physicians garbed like birds with enormous protective "beaks" full of posey, ministering to the infirm. During the European tuberculosis pandemic of the late 18th century, England lost fully a quarter of the population. Within living memory, people carried consumption bottles (to quietly spit blood into). In other words, it has always been with us. In 1876, the bacillus was identified, and aggressive management and the discovery of streptomycin in 1943 brought tuberculosis to its knees for the first time -- but it was only down -- not out. Life in a multicultural society is becoming a death defying act - and if we can neither monitor our borders nor prevent people from spitting in the street without fear of reprisal - we will lose. Infection with tuberculosis is a life-long event.

It may pass into remission but a weakening of the immune system will almost certainly reactivate it. Judging by current rates of infection in Canada, and knowing that "a person with active TB will typically infect 10 to 15 other people in the span of a single year," (WHO) means that health officials should be answering some hard questions. Why does Health Canada persist in squandering multi-millions "educating" Canadians about passive-smoke when "the worst [studies] purported to show that constant exposure to second-hand smoke posed a danger approximately equal to that of drinking two glasses of milk a day." (Globe and Mail, March 23, 1998) "The WHO [World Health Organization] has spent nearly a decade on research to produce a 200-page report, but condensed and published its findings on a single page. The findings say people who live or work with smokers have little to fear from passive smoking. They even suggest the smoke could have a protective effect." (London Times, March 8, 1998) In a world where you're forced to love everyone, it's okay to hate a smoker. After all, you can't tax tuberculosis.