BREEAM for Healthcare - a report for NHS Estates and Facilities Policy

This report considers sustainable healthcare properties and in particular the use of BREEAM for Healthcare 2008 and the options for improving sustainability across the NHS

WORK OUT

WORK OUT is a part of the 'Jump into the Unknown: Future Rhythms' conference as part of the 56th Venice Biennale. The project is 'Jane Fonda’s Workout' on a projection screen, with workout mats and water bottles provided. In 1981 Jane Fonda released her aerobic instruction book, Jane Fonda’s Workout, a heavily text based tome writing about equality, the environment, identity and the relationship of mind and body through exercise. In 1982, a new technology created a market opportunity that was seized through her pioneering video; Jane Fonda’s Workout. As with the book, the video was made to raise funds for husband Tom Hayden’s political party; The Campaign for Economic Democracy. (Tom Hayden of The Chicago 10, 1968 infamy) For Fonda, aerobics was a Macguffin to fight a political cause, she was a 1968 political refugee, giving in to 80’s Reaganomics, her politics were now of the mind and body, self awareness and being ‘conscious’, while looking out the window at Main St. USA, into your soul, down at your waistline and at your bank balance. Her Workout is a chameleon of a text, interrelating Politics, Film studies, American History, Gender studies and Biology. At its heart Politics directs the intention of that text, while it’s allegorical overture are rich in utilising Western and Sci-fi genre tropes. This fuses with its potential reading as an ‘Art object’, combining notions of Performance (gesture and subject/object discourse) and Sculpture. (form, function, site and exhibition)

As Good as It Gets? Security, Asylum, and the Rule of Law after the Certificate Trilogy

This article uses constitutional discourses on the legality of security certificates to shed light on darker, neglected corners of the security and migration nexus in Canada. I explore how procedures and practices used in the certificate regime have evolved and migrated to analogous adjudicative and discretionary decision-making contexts. I argue, on the one hand, that the executive’s ability to label persons security risks has been subjected to meaningful constraints in the certificate regime and other functionally equivalent adjudicative proceedings. On the other hand, the ability of discretionary decision-makers to deport individuals who pose de jure security risks to face torture or similar abuses remains effectively unconstrained — so much so that it is doubtful that Canada has complied with Suresh v. Canada. If the Supreme Court of Canada takes its own rationale in the certificate trilogy seriously, it must either revise its position in Suresh or encourage the extension of the procedures and practices used in the certificate regime to the entire security and migration nexus, including the removal process

As Good as It Gets? Security, Asylum, and the Rule of Law after the Certificate Trilogy

This article uses constitutional discourses on the legality of security certificates to shed light on darker, neglected corners of the security and migration nexus in Canada. I explore how procedures and practices used in the certificate regime have evolved and migrated to analogous adjudicative and discretionary decision-making contexts. I argue, on the one hand, that the executive’s ability to label persons security risks has been subjected to meaningful constraints in the certificate regime and other functionally equivalent adjudicative proceedings. On the other hand, the ability of discretionary decision-makers to deport individuals who pose de jure security risks to face torture or similar abuses remains effectively unconstrained — so much so that it is doubtful that Canada has complied with Suresh v. Canada. If the Supreme Court of Canada takes its own rationale in the certificate trilogy seriously, it must either revise its position in Suresh or encourage the extension of the procedures and practices used in the certificate regime to the entire security and migration nexus, including the removal process

The Art of Persuasion: International/Comparative Human Rights, The Supreme Court of Canada and the Reconstitution of the Canadian Security Certificate Regime

In this dissertation, the author explores the jurisprudential foundations of the “relevant and persuasive” doctrine, which authorizes Canadian judges to rely on international and comparative human rights when interpreting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Viewed in its best light, this doctrine improves respect for human rights in two distinct ways: securing Canada’s compliance with its international human rights obligations and enhancing the responsiveness of state law to the global and multicultural context of Canadian society. However, actual jurisprudence suggests that the doctrine has helped undermine principles of respect for constitutional supremacy and respect for international law, in part because it does not contain clear, objective criteria governing what counts as a relevant and persuasive norm. In the absence of such criteria, “result-oriented” judges are free to instrumentally pick norms that help rationalize decisions made entirely on the basis of political and ideological factors. Some would go so far as to argue that the doctrine enables judges to use the rhetoric of human rights to constitutionally entrench relations of domination; there is some empirical evidence to support this claim. Given the increasingly global context of contemporary judicial decision-making, it is surprising that judges have not yet offered a convincing justification for the relevant and persuasive doctrine. This dissertation attempts to offer such a justification. Weaving together a wide range of legal and moral philosophy, argumentation theory and international law/international relations theory, the author hypothesizes that judicial decisions about the relevance and persuasiveness of international and comparative human rights follow the contours of rhetorical and dialogical processes distinctive to law. With a view to testing this hypothesis, he develops analytical frameworks that help observers rationally identify, construct and evaluate “persuasive” international and comparative human rights arguments. Using the court-led reconstitution of the Canadian security certificate regime as a case study, he then attempts to demonstrate how the relevant and persuasive doctrine operates, how it coheres with principles of respect for constitutional supremacy and international law, and how it can improve respect for human rights among a wide range of globally-situated discursive communities

Montreal’s Sanctuary Policy for Non-Status Migrants: Opportunity and Obstacles

In February 2017, the city of Montreal adopted a policy entitled Access to Municipal Services Without Fear with a view to allowing non-status migrants to access some municipal programs and services without fear of being arrested and removed from Canada. This article offers a critical analysis of the city of Montreal’s policy. We discuss the main barriers to implementation, namely, the limited jurisdictional power and authority of the city in migration matters and the municipal police’s refusal to comply with the policy. We draw on the conceptual framework of the sanctuary city to argue that the municipality crafted creative solutions to barriers as part of its bid to make the city more inclusive.En février 2017, la Ville de Montréal a adopté une politique intitulée accès aux services municipaux sans peur dans le but de permettre aux migrants sans status d’accéder à certains programmes et services municipaux sans craindre d’être arrêtés et renvoyés du Canada. Cet article propose une analyse critique de la politique de la ville de Montréal. Nous discutons des principaux obstacles à la mise en oeuvre,à savoir le pouvoir juridictionnel et l’autorité limités de la Ville en matière de migration et le refus de la police municipale et de se conformer à la politique. Nous nous appuyons sur le cadre conceptuel de la ville sanctuaire pour soutenir que la municipalité a élaboré des solutions créatives aux obstacles en vue de rendre la ville plus inclusive

Avro: Overview and Implications for Metadata Processing

Poster presented at 2018 Code4Lib conference in Washington, D.C