Waaaa -- Habitual dishonesty -- Turns out Allan Rock did it again -- based on the Globe & Mail article of today

With the hockey team distributed-discipline machination this time...

Remember when Allan Rock let VP-Academic Francois Houle take all the heat for a letter he instructed Houle to write to Ann Coulter (LINK)? That was something. Took him weeks to come out and admit it, after it was disclosed through access to information...

Well now the national media are reporting that Rock's "independent report" about the hockey team was (not just a disingenuous public-image maneuver as students claimed but) actually a covert preemptive tactic against anticipated lawsuits.

There you have it. Hockey team members participated in good faith in what they thought was an independent investigation, which was actually the work of Rock's hired lawyers preempting any legitimate legal action that those same hockey players might need to take to repair the damages caused by Rock.

Then that so-called "independent investigation" was used to punish the entire team but without disclosing the report to them. That's a good educational example to give: "Take that and now go and ponder why I punished you!"

The Globe & Mail reported today -- "University of Ottawa hockey team probe was part of legal strategy":

Last June, university president Allan Rock told a news conference that independent investigator Steven Gaon had delivered a report. Rock said the university fired hockey coach Real Paiement based on the finding he did not inform school officials about the Thunder Bay incident.

In a subsequent letter to The Globe and Mail, Rock said the investigation also “disclosed widespread behaviour that was disreputable and unbecoming of representatives of uOttawa and suggested an unhealthy climate surrounding the team.”

Gaon was actually hired and directed by the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright Canada, which in turn had been retained by the university.

“Norton Rose Fulbright … retained an independent investigator to probe the facts underlying the allegations, in order to be in a position to give legal advice to the university on potential legal claims arising from the men’s hockey team matter,” the firm said in a submission to Ontario’s Information Commissioner in December.

The Canadian Press lodged a complaint with the commissioner’s office after the university refused to release any part of the investigation’s findings under the province’s freedom of information law.

In May, Gaon delivered not one, but two reports – one about allegations of sexual misconduct and the other on excessive drinking. Those reports were also prepared “for use in giving legal advice,” according to university lawyer David Bolger.

The university said in a June press release that Gaon’s findings would not be published “to avoid any interference with the ongoing police investigation and out of respect for the university’s privacy obligations.”

But in its submissions to the information commissioner, the university cites as its primary concern the fact that the records are considered legal advice.

Disclaimer: The statements herein about Allan Rock's "habitual dishonesty" are not statements of fact. The said Allan Rock's dishonesty has never been proven and is solely my opinion. These are my opinions based on the cited media and blog reports, and the public knowledge reported therein.

Just a thought about Allan Rock and the Globe & Mail

The Globe & Mail is dedicated to the Liberal Machine. Why then did several Globe & Mail editorials so viciously trash Rock about the embattled president's hockey team fiasco? Never before seen.

(Not to diminish the magnitude of the fiasco, which may yet lead to a lawsuit or settlement.)

Rock even felt compelled to respond in fanfare, with the usual empty lines, in a desperate move to attempt damage-control.

My guess is that -- in the context of Justin Trudeau being positioned as the next Prime Minister (even Brian Mulroney is chiming in) -- the Liberal bosses and their funders do NOT want Rock and his baggage back on the scene.

The message is clear: Stay away. Do another term of destruction at the U of O if need be. You have not been cleansed of your famous "shit magnet in his pocket" image.

Too bad for the U of O that its president will not have more important matters to attend to.

Just a thought.

uOttawa's Allan Rock gets another well-deserved thrashing from the Globe & Mail -- Justice gets iced

Globe editorial

Justice gets iced at U Ottawa

The Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, Aug. 24 2014, 7:00 PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, Aug. 24 2014, 7:00 PM EDT

This is again about Rock's arguably greatest fiasco to date at uOttawa -- his incredible handling of discrete sexual assault allegations by collectively punishing the entire Gee Gees hockey team.

Unfreakingboleavable that this seemed to Rock like the thing to do, in addition to summarily firing the coach for not immediately giving a report to the president's office.

In the words of the Globe & Mail editorial:

"Mr. Rock’s decision is more inexplicable than ever today. It reeks of injustice."

Not bad for a former minister of justice. How much more damage to the institution's plummeting reputation will the Board allow?

Globe and Mail (not the National Post) teaches Rock a lesson about due process

GLOBE EDITORIAL

Due process on ice at the University of Ottawa

The Globe and Mail

PublishedSunday, Jul. 13 2014, 6:00 PM EDT

Allegations that some members of the University of Ottawa’s men’s hockey team committed sexual assault in Thunder Bay earlier this year are deeply disturbing. If they prove to be true, the young men involved are guilty of a serious criminal offence, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But the university’s recent decision to suspend the entire hockey program for a full season is hasty and unjust to those players whose only fault is one of circumstance: They happen to play on the same team as the three alleged offenders. Twenty-one players are innocent of any crime – even an alleged one – yet they are being treated as though they are guilty by association. It’s a kind of collective punishment.

It’s a surprising verdict, coming from Allan Rock, the University of Ottawa’s president, who once served as justice minister. He justified the sweeping sanctions after an internal review – details kept confidential – showed some team members’ behaviour during the tournament in Thunder Bay “did not meet the university’s expectations of our student athletes” and “was not in keeping with the university’s values.” If that sounds vague, it is no more so than statements from the Thunder Bay Police concerning the alleged Feb. 1 incident. Their investigation is complete but they have not yet decided whether any charges will be laid. Perhaps the university’s investigators uncovered something the police missed, but unless Mr. Rock makes their findings public, it’s impossible to understand why he chose such a harsh course of action. Would it have made more sense to wait for the police to lay charges, and for those charges to be proven (or not) in court? It’s called due process, and one would think that Mr. Rock would get that.

The university’s suspension of the hockey program doesn’t just mean a couple of dozen players don’t get to play their sport. A group of people who had nothing to do with the alleged incident – some of whom weren’t even in Thunder Bay – have had their reputations tarnished, job offers revoked, and have been ostracized by peers. Mr. Rock should have waited; if any players are ultimately found guilty, the university can punish them (after the justice system does). But based on the evidence that’s publicly known, at least 21 other players have done nothing wrong. They deserve something else from Mr. Rock: the presumption of innocence.
 

Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy want an R2P war in Syria

Commentary on -- Looking back at Kosovo can move the Syria conflict forward, By Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, Special to The Globe and Mail, Aug. 26 2013

Allan Rock has the pet project, among other such pet projects, to use his position as president of the University of Ottawa, to promote the "doctrine" of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a preferred pretext for geopolitical wars.

His latest enthusiastic call, with Lloyd Axworthy, for an illegal war in Syria is sickening. Is the Globe and Mail looking to be part of a Liberal Machine come back?

You have to read this stuff to believe it:

What strengthens the hand of the President ["the President", not "the US President"?] and others who must plan these steps is that in 2005, subsequent to the Kosovo intervention, UN member states unanimously adopted the principle of Responsibility to Protect or “R2P”, establishing the basis for international action to prevent or stop the wholesale murder of innocent people by their governments. The principle that holds that military action, as a last resort, is justified to protect civilian populations from mass murder, provided that the force used is proportionate to the threat, likely to succeed and unlikely to cause more harm than good. R2P has been reaffirmed more than once since 2005 by the General Assembly and continues to enjoy wide-spread support. It was the basis for the successful UN/NATO intervention in Libya. ["successful"? As in all-out war and total destruction of an advanced society?]

R2P can and should be used as the basis for action in Syria. Although the 2005 agreement contemplated a Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention, member states surely did not intend that urgent humanitarian responses would be hostage to vetoes unreasonably exercised out of self-interest by one or more of the permanent five Council members. The very purpose of R2P is that we should all protect innocent lives without reference to purely national interests or crass political gamesmanship. [Wow. Mr. Rock is giving us a lesson on "crass political gamesmanship", and using the allegation to circumvent UN checks on war. It's just amazing.]

Just this summer, a blue ribbon group of Americans co-chaired by Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, and Richard Williamson, former Sudan envoy under President George W. Bush, urged the inclusion of R2P as a key element in American foreign policy. Their bipartisan recommendation, based on rigorous analysis [of the kind displayed in this article?], answers those who advocate inaction because mass atrocities abroad “do not engage America’s national interests”. Albright’s proposal, like R2P itself, puts our response ["our" response? US = Canada?] to mass suffering and killing on a higher plane than conventional power politics.

I'm all for putting "mass suffering and killing on a higher plane than conventional power politics", but, forgive me for saying so, I just don't think that trillion-dollar war machines controlled by "power politics", freed from the nuisance of UN constraints, are instruments that can help achieve this "higher plane".

I'm also having some trouble taking Mr. Axworthy and Mr. Rock seriously here. I mean their logic is impeccable as always, but maybe some university-funded independent research on the "cause more harm than good" idea in actual war zones would be in order? After all, there are enough field areas to study. 

The final words in the article are about "our" war against Syria:

President Obama is right in looking to Kosovo as a model in Syria. It's now up to friends, allies, and all those who seek a world of justice to urge him on, and to offer their support.

When the students wanted to get faculty approval for an activism course at the University of Ottawa, they proposed the course code "SCI 1984". The course code was not allowed, and the course was only allowed to be given a single time in 2006, but it now seems the proposed course code was foreshadowing the immediate future of the institution, as it was about to embark in the Allan Rock experiment.

The Globe and Mail published some critical responses to the Axworthy-Rock piece, such as (LINK):

Here we go again. An atrocity is rashly and prematurely blamed on a sovereign government, forming the pretext for a “humanitarian” intervention, violating international law, so the West can illegally and one-sidedly intervene in a civil war to replace the “rogue” government with a more “Western-friendly” one. Do Western leaders honestly think we are this naive?

Michael Pravica, Henderson, Nev.

.......

Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock only remember Responsiblity to Protect when it seems likely to contribute to regime change desired by the Western powers, and when UN-supported intervention is unlikely (Intervene In Syria? Look To The Kosovo Model – Aug. 27). To the credit of our own government, Canada has not supplied arms to either side. The goal should be a negotiated peace, not exacerbation of the bloodletting.

Edwin Daniel, Victoria

.......

The use of R2P requires UN Security Council agreement before military intervention can be authorized. Mr. Axworthy and Mr. Rock dismiss this requirement by suggesting that UN member states “did not intend” that urgent humanitarian responses be held hostage to vetoes by a member of the Security Council. But, of course, this is precisely what the UN’s founders did want, otherwise there would not have been a UN.

They go on to argue that the bombing of Serbia in 1999 is the model to be followed for resolving the Syrian dilemma. Yet NATO’s unilateral intervention in Serbia was done in clear violation of the UN Charter and a violation of international law. It is now clear that intervention had little to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with giving NATO a reason to exist.

James Bissett, Ottawa, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia