I try, I really do try, to be empathetic and compassionate when it comes to misguided parents, who buy into nonsense that ends up harming their children.
After all, with the 鈥淥prah effect鈥� and charlatans such as Dr. Oz running around, the idolatry of celebrity and the rise of anti-science, anti-intellectual politicians, it is pretty easy to make a case these parents are also victims.
And I don鈥檛 doubt their intentions are pure and their pain is very real.
Empathy and compassion does not negate the necessity of locking up adults, who, by their ignorance, cause the death of children, however.
Such is the case with Tamara Lovett, the 47-year-old Calgary mom who has been charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life causing the death of her seven-year-old son.
Obviously seriously ill with a streptococcus infection, the boy just needed a simple antibiotic.
Lovett gave him dandelion tea and oil of oregano instead. She only did what should have been her first action, to call a doctor, when he started convulsing.
This makes me so angry I want to scream. It is one thing for an adult to choose patently ridiculous so-called 鈥渘atural鈥� interventions, but to subject your kids to this stuff goes beyond the criminal.
Balancing personal liberty of parents with child protection is a tricky business at best. As a free society, we value and respect difference. Nevertheless, how many children have to die before we take collective responsibility for allowing 鈥渃omplementary鈥� charlatans to occupy the same space as legitimate doctors?
This woman did not come to her ridiculous beliefs completely on her own. We must stop legitimizing nonsense and faith as equal alternatives to real medicine.
We can鈥檛 force it on adults, but we ought to be able to force it on their children, who have the same right to life and liberty, but not necessarily the capacity to make their own choices yet.
As long as we鈥檙e being reactive instead proactive, however, we need to throw the book at these people, regardless of their best intentions.
Lips together
In a very rare, but welcome, decision the Canadian Judicial Council has recommended that Robin Camp, the 鈥渒nees together鈥� judge, be removed from the federal bench.
Camp asked the now notorious question 鈥渨hy didn鈥檛 you just keep your knees together鈥� to a victim he kept calling 鈥渢he accused鈥� during a sex assault trial in 2014 when he was an Alberta provincial court judge.
In determining Camp unfit to continue, a five-member panel wrote unanimously:
鈥淲e conclude that Justice Camp鈥檚 conduct is so manifestly and profoundly destructive of the concept of the impartiality, integrity and independence of the judicial role that public confidence is sufficiently undermined to render the judge incapable of executing the judicial office.鈥�
This, even after the judge has profusely apologized and taken personal counseling during which he was a model student and after which he concluded, 鈥淚 was not the good judge I thought I was; Canadians deserve more from their judges.鈥�
He is correct in that. We do. And we applaud his newfound insight, but the damage is done. He may be forgiven, but he can never again command the confidence of the public.
It also may have seriously undermined the incentive, which is very low to begin, for victims of sexual assault to come forward.
The council鈥檚 work is just a recommendation, though, which is now headed for Justice Minister Judy Wilson-Raybould鈥檚 desk. A federal judge can only be removed by Parliament.
Similar recommendations have only been made twice before. In both cases the offending judges resigned before the recommendations made it to the House of Commons.
Justice Camp should follow suit before disgrace follows embarrassment.
