The left-leaning Glavin notes that the historical role of the left has been to combat fascism and feels it has abdicated its responsibility in the case of Afghanistan and the Taliban. The source of this failure he feels is the creation of a fictional state of mind called “Absurdistan”, shaped by a compliant media happy to rely on repetition of untruths about Afghanistan and its reliance on a select few experts on that country, such as Malalai Joya, whose viewpoint Glavin clearly loathes. Taking on Joya—author of the “polemical hagiography” A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice—is a bit like taking a swipe at Mother Teresa in some circles, but Glavin astutely and intelligently challenges perceived wisdom on Afghanistan on many fronts.

Ultimately it is Glavin’s recounting of the history of Afghanistan and its people—an opportunity for him to show us more of his heart than his head—that moved me, and reminds us as Canadians what we are doing in Afghanistan—and why we should be there.

Demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square in February 2011. Photo by Asmaa Waguih (Reuters)

There’s no denying that, in many parts of the world, women’s rights are in a bad state. There are hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists working to change that fact. But the persecution of women throughout certain parts of the world has, in the last decade, been co-opted as a pretext for military occupation, and “saving the women” of these countries has not been the outcome. Women need to be more empowered all over the world; that goal is not going to be accomplished by military invasion.

In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy, the United States and its allies began the “war on terror,” invoking the appalling plight of Afghan women as one of the primary reasons for their intervention in Afghanistan, along with the promise of rooting out al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In November, 2001, the U.S. Department of State released a document entitled “The Taliban’s War Against Women.” The document began with the words: “Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society.” The same day that this document was released, Laura Bush launched a radio debut addressing the plight of Afghan women, in an effort to garner public support for the war. What was overlooked at the time, and continues to be overlooked eleven years later is the fact that the Taliban, in many ways, resembled their predecessors: the fundamentalist Mujahideen whom the United States had supported since the summer of 1979 in its efforts to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Furthermore, what the report and Mrs. Bush failed to mention was the fact that the oppression of Afghan women had begun with the U.S-backed Mujahideen, 20 years before the Taliban emerged, and that the plight of Afghan women would continue to deteriorate with the re-emergence of such individuals two decades later.

Prior to the ascendance of the Mujahideen, Afghanistan’s constitution, written in 1964, guaranteed women basic rights such as universal suffrage and equal pay. Women comprised half of university students, held government jobs and could travel and leave the house without a male escort. Moreover, “women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges, and most women did not wear the burqa.”

Beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, Afghanistan became the hot battlefield in which Cold War rivalry was fought out. The U.S., solely interested in winning the battle against the Soviet Union, funded the Mujahideen to the tune of $3 billion; Saudi Arabia provided as much and likely more. Neither country appreciated the ramifications of such a decision—especially the effects it would have on women’s rights. When asked about support for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a misogynist figure who became notoriously known for throwing acid on the faces of women who refused to wear the veil, and whose group, Hezb-e-Islami received as much as 50 percent of U.S. aid , a CIA official in Pakistan responded: “fanatics fight better.”

With the end of the Soviet invasion, which had caused the death of countless civilians, and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet forces, the U.S-supported Mujahideen came to power in the early 1990s. Burhanuddin Rabbani, the president of the Mujahideen Government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan suspended the constitution and issued strict religious decrees in its place. In 1992, Ayatollah Asif Mohseni (the interim governing council spokesman), who is now a close friend of President Karzai and the United States, along with Sayad Ali Javed (now a member of Parliament) publicly announced that they would begin implementing a new set of rules governing the conduct of women, which were referred to as the “Ordinance of the Women’s Veil.” These edicts prevented women from going out without their husband’s permission or talking with men who were not close relatives, and consequently led to the closure of many schools. Yet despite their similarities to the Taliban edicts, edicts collaboratively introduced by Rabbani, Mohseni and Javed received little criticism and the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan was anything but important for U.S. and its allies prior to the 9/11 tragedy.

Today, eleven years after the NATO-led intervention, Human Rights Watch has determined that the situation for Afghan women is “dismal in every area, including health, education, employment, freedom from violence, equality before the law, and political participation.” The same warlords, drug lords and fundamentalists who were in power in the 1990s (whom Ronald Reagan called freedom fighters against the communist threat) have now formed the Northern Alliance. What is most apparent is that the re-empowerment of such individuals and the growth in the militarization of Afghan society have increased, not decreased, violence against women. According to a nationwide survey of 4,700 households carried out by Global Rights in 2008, 87 percent of Afghan women reported that they had experienced at least one form of physical, sexual, or psychological violence or forced marriage. Fearing retaliation and police abuse, victims of violence will not seek help, and the few who do often face hostility and more abuse, while perpetrators of violence receive impunity. In addition, according to Rachel Reid, a Human Rights Watch researcher, since the fall of the Taliban, the percentage of girls who finish school has risen from zero percent to just four percent—a very minor improvement, especially when considering statistics from the pre-Mujahideen era, when girls and women made up half of university students in Kabul. Girls’ access to secondary education, which is by far the most vital for women’s emancipation, is still very low as well. Only 11 percent of secondary school age girls are enrolled in grades 7-9 and a dismal 4 percent in grades 10-12.

Furthermore, today, for the first time in Afghan history, women must simultaneously face all the enemies of women’s rights. On the one hand, Mujahideen fundamentalists now comprise the Northern Alliance and are in positions of power, firmly supported by NATO forces; on the other, they must face anti-government insurgents: al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Similarly the invasion of Iraq has not brought about much advancement in the realm of women’s rights. An Oxfam report in 2009 revealed that more than half of the women who had been interviewed had been forced to leave their houses since 2003, either because of violence or to seek employment. The report states that, “Nearly four fifths had stopped attending high school and university and 40 percent of those with children said their children were not going to school.” While sons were kept away from schools due to security reasons, daughters were kept away either because they were forbidden to attend, or because it was “too expensive”. This is a significant regression, considering that even under the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein, women were free to work, walk the streets unveiled, and go to school.

The wave of revolutions that swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 have provided a different narrative, though it remains an ambiguous one. Women formed a key constituency of the Tahrir Square protests that brought down Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt, but whether the revolution will produce an improvement in women’s rights remains to be seen, in Egypt and elsewhere. For instance, a few months after Mubarak’s ouster, army police broke up demonstrations in Tahrir Square and arrested seventeen women, assaulted them, and later threatened to charge them with prostitution. Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with two women who revealed that they were forced to undergo virginity examinations. One of the women who filed a lawsuit against the military has received death threats. The predominance of the Muslim Brotherhood—which, for all its reformist policies, is still very conservative about the role of women in society—in Egypt’s November elections also raises concerns about the future of the women’s rights movement in that country.

But there have been promising developments as well. Following the toppling of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s electoral commission adopted a gender parity law, and in August, Tunisia became the first Arab country to withdraw its main reservations on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The examples of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that the toppling of tyrants and western invasions are not sufficient ingredients for the advancement of women’s rights. In fact, the situation for women has grown steadily worse in both countries. The Arab Spring demonstrates that—while there are no guarantees—popular civil uprisings, and not “nation-building” invasions, stand a much better chance of instituting the kind of radical change that makes improvements in the status of women possible.

Ava Emaz is a pseudonym. We agreed to withhold her name to prevent harassment by Iranian authorities. She is a freelance writer based in Toronto.

Photo courtesy of IsumaTV

When climate change first started showing up in the news, people feared Canada’s North would literally melt away. As scientists debate and differing opinions—and confusion—abound, that initial panic seems to have ebbed. Amongst nearly everybody, of course, but the Inuit. After a lifetime of observation and generations of knowledge, Inuit elders say the melt is already happening. Their insight may be one of Canada’s greatest untapped resources, providing untold first-hand insight into the Inuit people’s traditional world and its changing climate. So why is no one listening?

From the age of five, Inuit children go outside to meet the morning. They look at where the wind is coming from and how cold it is; their parents quiz them on their observations. In the North’s extreme weather, life is inextricably linked to the environment—and that environment is changing. Leanna Ellsworth, Policy Advisor on Climate Change for Canada’s Inuit Circumpolar Council, says the warmer temperatures affect infrastructure built on permafrost, animal migration routes, abundance and, therefore, food supply. All bad, but nothing compared to the elders’ most surprising observation: The sun has moved.

Past the Arctic Circle, residents lose the sun for a few months during the deep of winter, says Igloolik-based Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk. That’s normal. What’s not, however, is where the sun reappears. For his film, Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, Kunuk interviewed elders from four communities, hundreds of kilometres apart, who all drew the same comparison to their childhood observations: Now when the sun returns in the spring, it has shifted right, across the horizon, as far as 20 km. “We were wondering what happened,” says Kunuk, “and the elders thought, ‘our world tilted off its axis.’”

The Inuit’s observations were met with some skepticism in the scientific world, admits Co-Director Ian Mauro, the only non-Inuit researcher working on Kunuk’s film and also a Canada Research Chair in Human Dimensions of Environmental Change at Mount Allison University. “In fact,” he says, “Many scientists disregarded them.” Not willing to discount the elders’ observations so easily, however, Mauro kept asking for more scientific opinions.

As it turns out, the sun hadn’t moved – but there was something wonky going on that scientists had missed. It’s called the Novaya Zemlya effect: a mirage is created on the horizon as hot atmospheric air meets the cold surface air, creating the appearance of a shift. This effect is exacerbated by climate change and thus, the sun’s altered course acts as a visible indicator. “Once the scientific community started to understand this seemingly complex story,” says Mauro, “many realized this indigenous knowledge is very effective to helping the world understand what environmental changes are taking place in the Arctic.” Let’s hope they spread the word.

Illustration by Matt Daley

Recently, Google ruined my life. I may be exaggerating slightly, given that all they did was redesign and tweak Google Reader, one of their many services that I use daily and for which I pay nothing. But Reader, an admittedly niche product that lets you read articles from many websites in one place, has become my online home. It is the thing that organizes and makes sense of the sprawling, incoherent mass of the internet and collects it on one familiar light-blue page.

So when Google swooped in and changed things, I felt as if someone had rearranged all my furniture like some undergraduate prank. Making matters worse, the ability to share things with other Reader users was now gone—sacrificed to the company’s need to push their new social network, Google+. Not only had they redecorated the place, they had gone and redone all the wiring, too—and I was stranded in this newly alien environment that used to seem like home.

There were, however, those who had the tools and wherewithal to respond. People—people far more tech-savvy than me—used a browser plug-in called Greasemonkey to write pieces of code that magically restored the old Google Reader to me. Greasemonkey, as its auto mechanic-derived name suggests, lets you pop open the hood of your web browser and mess around, and there’s almost no end to what you can do with it.

It isn’t something just anyone can pick up, however. In order to create your own personalized experience of the web, you need to know how to code or, at the very least, wait for someone else to do it for you. And that requirement highlights a simple fact about the online world: if you aren’t literate in the languages of digital technology, your capacity to control your own experience is constrained. From the latest outrageous Facebook redesign that millions of people freak out over, to subtle tweaks to the ways in which Twitter operates, many of us—even those like me who really care about this stuff—find ourselves powerless to suit the web to our own needs.

It’s a problem that will require immensely complex solutions, primarily in how we conceive of education. If today we teach kids language and rhetoric so that one day they might pick apart politician’s speeches or learn to recognize a scam (and let’s face it, we’re not even doing that very well) we may soon have to do something analogous for programming skills. Much as “freedom of the press” was only ever true for those who owned one, protecting our freedoms online is going to require millions more people to better understand just how it works. Even those “digital natives” you hear about—the terrifying Tweeting, texting tweens—seldom have even the foggiest idea of how their favourite websites work. They can update their Facebook status without breaking stride, but could they code even a rudimentary equivalent? Vanishingly few could.

Thankfully, in the meantime there are intermediate bits of software that simplify and automate some aspects of coding so that those of us who can’t tell JavaScript from HTML can still control our digital lives in novel, unexpected ways. Take new service ifttt.com, for example. An acronym for “if this, then that”, ifttt allows you to cobble together dozens of commonly used web services to suit your own needs. Perhaps you want to know when a friend has posted a new picture on Flickr. Hook it up to ifttt and it can send you an email, a text message, even a phone call alerting you that your friend has uploaded their latest cat photo.

It isn’t quite idiot-proof. Yet it’s also a far cry from Greasemonkey and other programming-based tools because it asks you to think in terms you already know, rather than sophisticated new ones you must learn. And in a sense, this is the strange paradox of access and control on the web. On one hand, you are subject to the companies who become the default ways of connecting online, making you subject to their interests. On the other, the freer, less corporate versions of the web offer you tools to tweak how you use those services and to what end. It is—until coding literacy becomes the norm—almost akin to economics of the 1920s or the 2000s: with the tools of power centralized among a tiny few, the public is left at the mercy of those in control.

To get a sense of what is at stake, though, one need only turn to the ambivalent story of Diaspora*. In 2010, a four-person team of young programmers from New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences set out to build an alternative to Facebook that would address privacy worries and protect user data. Their announcement hit, however, amidst heightened concerns over Facebook’s record on privacy, and the team was thrown into a harsh spotlight, especially after a fundraising campaign suddenly netted them $200,000. Their plan was to create a Facebook with none of the drawbacks of Facebook, a task even Google can’t manage to do. Tragically, in late 2011 one of the four founders, 22 year-old Ilya Zhitomirskiy, was found dead, apparently after committing suicide.

No one knows, of course, if the pressure of trying to build an alternative to an all-powerful website contributed to Zhitomirskiy’s decision to take his life. But it’s an unsettling symbol of something—of how difficult it is for even young, brilliant programmers to take control of their and our online experience from multi-billion dollar entities. And, if truth be told, a redesign of a website is but a minor inconvenience. But the capacity of web firms to “rewire” whole swathes of our day-to-day lives is nonetheless ominous. It’s also a sign that, in future, freeing oneself from their grasp will come from seizing their tools and methods as our own, and learning how to code.

Ilustration by Dave Donald

Yes, we must stop killing and eating animals.

Vegetarians give up meat for various reasons—out of compassion for animals, to be healthy or to be more environmentally friendly. And now vegetarianism is more accessible than ever, says David Alexander, Executive Director of the Toronto Vegetarian Association. “There’s simply no compelling reason,” he believes, “for vegetarians to embrace meat of any origin.”

When animals are treated like products, he says, who gets to decide what’s humane? Even our best intentions can become murky in the pursuit of cost-cutting, marketing, and making money. Take free-run eggs: some egg producers who use the free-run label don’t keep their chickens in battery cages, but still de-beak them and pump them full of antibiotics—making the eggs far removed from the higher-priced ethical product consumers think they’re buying. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to tell which companies are doing the bare minimum. “What’s a more realistic avenue for social change: putting our faith in the corporations that profit from animal slaughter to live up to consumer concerns, or putting our energy into building a movement that shows people how to stop the suffering altogether?” Alexander asks. “We believe it’s the latter.”

No, we must adopt an ethical approach to animal farming.

Mario Fiorucci, Co-President of The Healthy Butcher, is a vegetarian-turned-meat-eater. For him, it’s all about the practice of procuring ethical meat. And yes, he says, there is such a thing—and it actually parallels the principles of vegetarianism. Both, proponents argue, spare animals pain and unfair or inhumane treatment. The one difference, of course, is you get to eat the hamburger. For many who love chowing down, but hate being part of the corporate mystery chain, ethical meat shops are an appealing choice.

“The animals we sell have lived happy, healthy lives,” says Fiorucci. Like other ethical meat shops, the Healthy Butcher only sells meat from farms that are certified organic, which means the farmers follow strict federal guidelines that address everything from humane treatment and happy lives to good food. Fiorucci can tell customers the farmer, the location of that farm, the feed, the water source and the kill date of the meat they’re buying. Everything in the shop is labeled in detail. And, the farmers aren’t just suppliers—they’re trusted partners who don’t cut corners. In other words, ethical meat shops offer a place to ask questions and get real, truthful answers. “It is surprising,” Fiorucci admits, “how many butchers don’t feel the need to have this level of transparency.”

Illustration by Matt Daley

On the second Saturday of every July, the Haudenosaunee people march across the border at Niagara Falls to remind North America of a message: “We are not American. We are not Canadian. We are Haudenosaunee.”

Harry Doxtator can remember attending the ceremony as a toddler, and now sits on the Border Crossing Committee as the Oneida representative. “We are establishing our right of having the ability to cross the border that they have designed. We are saying that we have the right to freely travel, as we call it, Turtle Island.”

Since the 1783 Treaty of Paris established the boundary between Canada and the United States, the Haudenosaunee have become a people divided. The borders of Canada, the United States, Ontario, Quebec, and New York demarcate their lands.

Since 1928, the crossing celebration acts as an affirmation of the rights laid out in Article III of the 1794 Jay Treaty. Signed by Britain and the United States, this article purports that the First Nations people dwelling on either side of the border can cross to and from and freely carry on commerce.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy says that they have neither been defeated by, nor accepted citizenship from, Canada or the United States and thus remain sovereign. Respect for the nation is expressed as early as 1613 in the Two Row Wampum Treaty. “As allies, the Haudenosaunee people were promised that their freedom and independence would always be recognized,” explains Grand Chief Mike Mitchell of Akwesasne, a Mohawk reserve that straddles both international and provincial borders. “From the imposition of the Indian Act, of residential schools, to brainwashing to make us forget who we are, the end product is still that, we are citizens of our own nation.” They have also held their own passports since the 1920s, and ID cards since the 1950s.

All members of the Six Nations—Oneida, Seneca, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Cayuga, and Onondaga—can hold a Haudenosaunee ID card and passport. The ID card is used is at the Canada-US border, and passport-holders have successfully used them to travel around the world. But heightened border security since 9/11 has caused escalating conflicts over the legitimacy of the Haudenosaunee passport.

Through the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), the United States released a restricted list of documents acceptable for entering the United States. The Haudenosaunee responded by creating a documentation committee in order to bring both pieces of identification up to date, both in terms of security and political acceptability. “We are in negotiations with the United States about having it accepted as compliant with WHTI,” says committee member, lawyer, and professor Paul Williams. “We’re also in negotiations with Canada, whose law at this point doesn’t have a list of acceptable documents.” Canada’s regulation only states that the documents should be satisfactory to the officer at the border crossing. “It gives the officer a bundle of discretion,” says Williams.

The latest upset was in June 2011 at the Cornwall border, which divides the Mohawk Nation in half, when Joyce King produced her Haudenosaunee passport as identification to enter into Canada. The Border Services Officer seized the document, deeming it unsanctioned.

Problems persist more on the Canadian side of the border than the American one. This is because, unlike the U.S., Canada never incorporated Jay Treaty’s article III into law. The Treaty of Ghent, which provides the restoration of the rights of First Nations as they existed prior to the War of 1812, has only been enacted in the U.S. The Crown promised to do the same—but never has.

“There are 28 articles in the Jay Treaty,” says Grand Chief Mitchell. “Canada has ratified and sanctioned 27 of them.”

The federal government believes there isn’t a reason to keep this promise, claiming that circumstances have changed. But Williams relays the stories of over 200 families that are broken apart by their inability to leave Canada, such as a woman from Tuscarora who, married to a Cayuga man at Six Nations, cannot return to the United States to visit her father who is dying of cancer. Forced to stay in Canada in fear that they won’t be permitted re-entry, it is clear that there are plenty of reasons for the Haudenosaunee to continue protesting for their rights to cross a border that their community precedes by hundreds of years.

Is Rahul Singh a visionary innovator, a pushy maverick—or both? Photo by Steve Payne

It’s two and a half days since the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010. The Adventist Hospital, an enormous white building in a formerly leafy suburb of Port-au-Prince, now looks more like a war zone. Thousands of people are camped around the hospital in need of urgent medical care—mangled limbs, bleeding head wounds, shattered bones. Every few minutes a pickup truck emerges from the dust and rubbish to deposit yet another injured body onto the hospital grounds.

In the midst of this bloody chaos stands Rahul Singh, a Toronto paramedic who rushed to the Haitian capital within hours of hearing the catastrophic news. A big, charismatic bear of a man, Singh becomes the natural centre of gravity of most rooms he walks into, and in the swirling chaos of the hospital, he’s the eye of the storm, someone people can’t help but look to for leadership. He doesn’t keep them waiting. Singh quickly sets to work with four paramedics, a general surgeon, and a water technician, all people he brought with him on a few hours’ notice.

The medical team begins to set fractures and amputate gangrenous limbs while Singh searches the surrounding area for a place to set up the water purification unit. He discovers a swimming pool that’s fed by a creek on the adjoining university campus. There are thousands of litres of water in the pool that they can purify. The creek will refill the pool, providing a continuous supply of water. He concentrates on the task at hand, blocking out the chaos around him. Later, he’ll describe it as a “Zen moment” in which time stands still. Within a few minutes, clean water is flowing from the tap. Singh and his team have only been in Haiti for a few hours, but they’re up and running.

In the immediate days after the quake, this was no small feat. The death toll was already estimated at 200,000 victims, and thousands more lay trapped or dead in the rubble. Non-governmental agencies tried to mobilize but faced complications because the country was in shambles without electricity or phone service. Wreckage, dead bodies, fires and homeless people blocked most roads. Schools, government buildings, and hospitals had collapsed, and even a prison was destroyed, leaving 4,000 inmates at large. Yet over an eight-week period, Rahul Singh and his small group of colleagues from the international aid NGO he founded, Global Medic, provided medical assistance to more than 7,000 people and distributed 15 million litres of clean water. Even more remarkable is that they did it on a budget of $400,000—miniscule by the measure of any humanitarian operation.

Global Medic’s work in Haiti earned Singh a place on TIME magazine’s “2010 TIME 100” list of the world’s most influential people, putting him in the company of Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, and Steve Jobs. The Globe and Mail named him one of Canada’s “Top 40 under 40” in 2009. Though the recognition is a recent development, he’s been doing his unorthodox humanitarian work for a long time: for the past 13 years Singh and his team have provided life-saving assistance in more than 40 countries suffering in the aftermath of tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, floods,landslides, and other disasters. However, despite his numerous awards and considerable experience, Singh remains an outsider in Canadian international disaster aid.

Singh is naturally gregarious, with a natural everyman charm. Whether it’s chatting up Taylor Swift’s backing band in a New York elevator (they were also attending the TIME 100 awards in 2010, and he offered to share a cab) or addressing the Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, he draws people in. Colleagues describe him as larger than life—the kind of person that can walk into a room and instantly captivate everyone’s attention. He brushes off any suggestion, however, that his rising-star status means he has any special talents. “I just work hard,” he says. “That’s all I’ve got. I see talented people around me and I can put them in a position to deliver.”

Born in 1970, Singh grew up as an only child with a single mother in Verdun, a former working class neighbourhood on the island of Montreal. “I was a poor kid. I was also an English kid in a French community and a brown kid in a white community,” he says. After his rough and tumble youth, Singh ended up in law enforcement and made his way to Hamilton, Ontario where he took a job with the Niagara Regional Police Service. He later moved to Toronto to work as a community patrol officer with Toronto Community Housing. The stress of working in a milieu of drugs, guns, and violence began to take a toll on Singh’s marriage, among other factors. He decided to leave law enforcement and become a paramedic instead, graduating from college in 1989.

The switch to working ambulances was a better fit for Singh, but it failed to save his marriage. At the age of 27, he was divorced, balding, and grumpy. Deciding that he needed to change things up, he took off travelling the world, and eventually wound up in Nepal where he worked with an organization that was training local medics. When a mudslide wiped out a nearby village, Singh was sent on his first humanitarian mission.

He slept in a hammock that was not at all designed for a man of his bulky frame; most nights it sagged so low that he ended up sitting in floodwater. Among the few comforts he enjoyed were cheese rations and listening to Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” on his Walkman. But despite the deprivations of the job, Singh found he was enjoying himself: “I discovered that I’m good at this. I’m thinking, ‘it’s the bomb!’” But the project soon ran out of money and was forced to close down. Singh’s dedication to the mission had not gone unnoticed, however, and he was invited to a meeting in Kathmandu to meet the director of the aid agency. When Singh arrived, he found the director staying in a five-star hotel. “There’s people dying and he’s eating a $21 pepper steak,” Singh says, shaking his head in disbelief. “I couldn’t swallow it, so I told him off.”

That experience was the catalyst for the development of Global Medic. Singh wanted to create an aid NGO that would do away with the executive salaries, bureaucracy, equipment overhead, and the other expensive trappings of aid delivery that he saw as wasteful. He started the David McAntony Gibson Foundation (named after his best friend, who had died in 1998), of which Global Medic would be the operational arm. He raised $8,500 in the foundation’s first year as a charity. And he rounded up his dirty dozen, 13 fellow Canadian paramedics. They set off on their first international mission in 2003, assisting anti-landmine personnel in Cambodia.

Global Medic has now worked on more than 60 missions and their 2010/2011 budget topped out at $1.4 million. Yet Singh takes no paycheque; he still works full-time as a paramedic with the Toronto Emergency Service. He and his full roster of paramedics, firefighters, and police officers all volunteer for missions by taking vacation time or unpaid leave. “I think we’ve got more credibility when we are unpaid,” Singh says, “and more importantly, it’s pretty hard to question our motivations.”

It’s remarkable that Singh has amassed a team of volunteers to call upon at a moment’s notice. The model best suits shift workers who can take time off without losing their jobs. Julie Colgan, a London, Ontario paramedic who has served three missions with Global Medic, says she enjoys the experience of seeing firsthand the difference she can make in a community, but she also appreciates the opportunity to work with Singh because of his “no bullshit, get out of my way because I’m coming in’ attitude.”

It’s precisely that approach—Singh calls it “pigheaded,” and says it’s typical of the paramedic mentality necessary to cope with the job—that has enabled Global Medic to grow exponentially in such a short period of time. Singh’s persuasive skills mean money and supplies seem to multiply in his care. He asks companies to donate generators, medicine, tents, water purification tablets and food to supply the warehouse outside Toronto. The team goes to Costco to stock up on food, PowerBars, bandages, and gauze before a mission. “Store clerks ask us why we’re buying so much stuff, and when I explain that we’re taking it to earthquake victims in Japan they give it to us for free,” he says. He often persuades airline and helicopter companies to fly in personnel and supplies at no cost. He also donates his speaking fees—up to $10,000 per talk—to Global Medic. One of Singh’s signature maneuvers is to tell speaking sponsors that he donates his fee, then ask them to double it. They usually do.

All this chutzpah hasn’t won Singh many friends among government officials at home. Singh is one of the few NGO directors in Canada willing to openly criticize the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He becomes livid when describing how long it takes for the agency to make funding decisions following a disaster. “They tell me they’re doing a good job but they’re sitting behind a desk,” he says, pounding a fist on the table. “I’ve just been in Haiti watching nine-year-old girls getting their legs chopped off, so don’t tell me you’re doing a good job, because you’re not.”

As a paramedic, Singh knows that time is of the essence when it comes to saving lives. It’s his primary focus—get into a country as fast as possible with life saving assistance—much like a 911 call—and then get out of the way so that longer-term agencies can take over. He believes Canada should have a prepackaged program like his, complete with inflatable hospitals and portable water units, ready to go at all times. “We get Canadian supplies, innovation, and boots on the ground within the first 24 hours of a disaster,” he says.

In the current system, the bulk of Canada’s humanitarian funding goes to the multinational organizations such as CARE, Oxfam and Save the Children. It frustrates Singh to see funding for immediate disaster response go to agencies that he says are better suited to long-term development. Trying to crack into that closed circle has put Singh at loggerheads with the bigger agencies, which—perhaps understandably—don’t agree with Singh’s assessment. “I get a real push back, ‘stay down young man’ type of vibe from them,” he says.

Agencies such as CARE and Oxfam have developed their mandate for disaster response in a way that takes into account their long term relief goals and advocacy work. They maintain the view that it’s important not just to get in fast after a disaster but also to get it right. “There are moments in which an organization that is first on the scene can appear to be more efficient,” says Kevin McCort, president and CEO of Care Canada. “In the long run, though, it makes sense for the community to benefit from a group that can stay there and provide value for a long time, rather than the person who gets their first with whatever they happen to have.”

Faster isn’t necessarily better, McCort says. He describes how the Canadian Medical Assistance Teams, a small NGO based in Brantford, Ontario, immediately got on planes to fly to Tokyo after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. However, once they landed they realized they weren’t prepared to deal with the radiation crisis, so they had to come home. The focus on getting into a country first is also not entirely altruistic. “There’s a macho component among aid groups,” says Susan MacGregor, professor of international development at Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning. “Part of it is bragging rights to a certain extent. All the NGOs want to be first on the ground.”

In theory, getting into a country for the initial life saving response following a disaster should be simple. “It’s easy in the sense that the needs are clear,” says MacGregor. “When people don’t have water, you give them water. That is much more clear than trying to give somebody a livelihood, or trying to improve somebody’s life expectancy.” Yet providing these basic necessities becomes extremely difficult in the midst of chaotic conditions. The result is that disaster aid—an estimated $15 billion a year industry with more than 250,000 employees worldwide—has become a circus.

The size of the circus has gotten bigger in recent years as instantaneous news reports with images of suffering create awareness around the need for help. That prompts a flood of well-intentioned—but not necessarily competent—do-gooders into high-profile locations. While there is logic to having more players on the ground, it hasn’t yet resulted in a more effective response.

Many experienced organizations have become increasingly frustrated at the bottleneck of aid that occurs. Médecins Sans Frontières had their planes bumped off schedule in Haiti because flights for celebrities such as John Travolta and Sean Penn took precedence. Involvement of state actors such as military and government compounds the problem and seems to be an increasing trend. Add to that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of church groups and small NGOs with varying degrees of professionalism, capability, and contextual understanding and you have an atmosphere not unlike the Wild West. “There is a difference between ‘able to do’ and ‘has the capacity to do’ and those are important distinctions,” says Michael Fark, operations manager with MSF.

MacGregor describes a situation in which a group called Mothers Without Borders came to Indonesia after the earthquake and tsunami in 2004. The group of women from Arkansas wanted to get to Banda Aceh to care for orphaned babies, but they arrived in the country without tents, water bottles, or food. “They came with a few thousand dollars in cash and had absolutely no idea how to get north in the country. It’s these types that are a huge drain on the system,” she says.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tries to coordinate the work of various agencies through a cluster system, which splits relief efforts into sectors such as shelter, food, water, and education. However, many small NGOs don’t know about it. Others, such as Global Medic, don’t have full-time personnel to attend meetings, and don’t consider the system useful to them anyway.

Singh prefers to find his own local partners to work with. “The meetings don’t even happen until a week after a disaster and by that time it’s too late,” Singh says. Outsider groups such as Global Medic are branded “cowboys” in the aid world by the larger NGOs. While OCHA is clearly still a work in progress, the UN believes the effort is worthwhile because lack of coordination results in duplicated efforts and wasted resources.

“It’s not that we want to have somebody sitting in a meeting all day,” says Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam. “But we recognize that if we don’t, we’re operating on partial information and we’re likely to be complicating, rather than helping the situation.” Yet even the UN system has its limitations. “It’s difficult to coordinate 50 agencies,” says Fox. “ It’s impossible to coordinate 5,000.”

Global Medic has now joined Policy Action Group on Emergency Response, a network that promotes coordination between aid agencies. It’s a signal to others in the industry that Singh is willing to play along—up to a point. It’s an acknowledgement that Global Medic may ultimately have to temper Singh’s shoot-first bravado in order to grow. Singh wants access to CIDA funds, which means courting the very agency Singh has spent more than a decade antagonizing.

There have already been some tangible results of this new, more congenial approach: CIDA provided $535,000 to Global Medic to assist with relief following the 2010 flooding in Pakistan. Still, Singh is impatient as ever: “It’s like pulling teeth,” he says. “They’re taking their time to warm up to us, and I’m like, ‘let’s get into bed.’”

For now, however, Global Medic continues to depend on private and corporate donations. “Our donors are different. They don’t want to see pictures of crying babies,” Singh says. He recounts how a law firm in Toronto called up after the earthquake in Haiti and wanted to donate $50,000. When they asked him what he would do with the money, Singh told them “we’ll put another hospital and water unit in, and we can do it tomorrow.” It’s that straight-shooter response and apparent financial transparency that make Global Medic popular with a public that is increasingly aware that there is a gap in what NGOs claim they accomplish and what they can actually do.

Sitting in his office, surrounded by hundreds of framed press clippings, Singh sips tea and reflects on whether he can change the way disaster response is currently delivered. The TIME award has opened doors and in some ways leveled the playing field, but Singh is up-front about his limitations. “We need a CEO here. We need somebody that can wear a tie and go talk to government and speak the language and schmooze—because that’s just not me,” he says. It hasn’t escaped Singh’s attention that often he is the lowest-paid and least-educated person in the room. He shrugs it off. “It’s funny, this life that I lead, because I’m a blue-collar grunt. I’m not a caviar-and-Perrier kind of guy.”

Nevertheless, Singh is determined to change the way Canadian humanitarian aid is delivered, whether the caviar-and-Perrier set—or anyone else—likes it or not. “We’ll get there eventually,” he says. “But will the government open their arms and welcome me?” He throws back his head and a huge bellow of laughter fills the room. “Hell no!”

Meet the lobbyist who brought the tar sands inside the beltway. Illustration by Antony Hare

Paul Frazer is an invisible Canadian. He doesn’t live in Canada, and hasn’t for more than two decades. But he works for us, and he represents us abroad, and he holds sway over the leaders and big businesses that affect our lives. In many ways, he has power over the powerful. But here at home, this sway is often unremarked upon.

Frazer is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., focused on representing Canadian interests below the 49th. Many regard him as our secret weapon in an ongoing political and social battle within North America. He has represented our provinces (Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan), and our businesses, on issues including solar energy development, trade policy and homeland security. In his work, Frazer often holds our environment—and thus our economic and social welfare—in his hands.

In his office, two blocks away from the White House, there are two engravings on the wall. One depicts the Battle of Lundy’s Lane during the War of 1812, which the Canadian side won. The other (“For balance,” Frazer notes), the Battle of Chippewa, won by the Americans in the same war. The images of that seminal conflict are what his clients are greeted with when they knock on his door. And if they’re Canadian, with a reliance on doing business in the United States, they inevitably will.

Frazer was born in Toronto and grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. His parents owned a summertime motel, a restaurant, and a gas station. His family border-hopped back when it was still easy—some of his aunts, uncles and cousins have married Americans.

A habitué of odd jobs, Frazer spent a summer cleaning basements and washing windows for the late Liberal MP and Pearson cabinet member Judy LaMarsh. He also worked at the Rainbow Bridge, which he credits with teaching him about the basics of migration between Canada and the United States.

Still, “It was clear to me that I would seek my professional work outside of that place,” Frazer says bluntly. In 1967, he spent the summer working at The World Expo in Montreal. At the Ontario Pavilion, the excitement soon wore off—the same old politicians needed handholding tours of the venue, and the glamour of playing host to VIPs lost its lustre as the summer wore on.

“We were fairly jaded,” says Les Monkman, Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, who worked the event with Frazer. He remembers a last-minute tour that was scheduled for the end of a long day: “Everyone called out ‘Not it!’ and Paul said he would do it. At that point all we knew was that the tour was for the person who had just become Justice Minister, and his name was Pierre Trudeau. Paul had really good instincts on when to move.” After earning two degrees in political science, from McGill and Carleton universities, Frazer was encouraged by Lester B. Pearson to enter the Foreign Service. When Frazer demurred, Pearson wrote him a recommendation letter for law school instead. Frazer ended up in the Foreign Service anyway: working for Prime Minister Kim Campbell, in the Department of Foreign Affairs under Joe Clark, and was appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic by Brian Mulroney in 1992.

In 1989, Frazer had attended the wedding of Globe and Mail correspondent Paul Koring in Washington—just a short trip from where he was studying international affairs at Harvard University. There, he met Dr. Tina Alster, who was also studying at Harvard. For five years, Frazer and Alster kept up a long distance relationship between Washington (where Alster was raised), Ottawa, and Prague. “This is not a medicine town,” says Alster, of Washington. “I moved back not because of my family, but because this guy was a Canadian diplomat, and I thought one day he’ll be here in Washington.” And he was, but: “I never wanted to be posted to Washington,” says Frazer. “It wasn’t foreign enough for me, it wasn’t exotic.” In 1994, the Foreign Service posted Frazer to Washington to work at the Canadian Embassy, and he’s lived there ever since. It may not be the exotic locale he dreamed of—but the Beltway is home to plenty of unique wildlife and customs all its own.

Frazer and his colleagues like to say that he’s the only lobbyist in Washington to provide basic translation services between Canada and the United States. At the root of it, what he really does is tell Canadian companies how to effectively make Americans do what they want. Likewise, he brings Canadian business to the attention of American policymakers.

As our business interests are so inextricably linked, Frazer’s clients come to him to ensure policy decisions made in Washington don’t lead to turmoil at home. On his part, Frazer continually finds himself reminding Americans that we live in a linked economy.

After the mid-term elections in November 2010, many Canadian businesses were prepared for an upheaval when the Republicans took majority in the House of Representatives. Frazer asked them to cool down, reminding them that the change meant little in terms of legislation.

“You can’t catch all those things that go pop,” he says, with some resignation. “Some of them make more noise than anything else, and some are more serious than others.” He is reluctant to spill client names. Along with the Province of Alberta, Frazer mentions a company in Nova Scotia that developed an enhanced, environmentally friendly process to dispose of toxic liquid. He’s also provided advice to the Government of Ontario regarding American interests in green energy.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act database maintains a list of all lobbying actions filed with the House of Representatives. Frazer is listed in their database dating back to 2001 as having represented clients including the Canada International Pharmacy Association, Scotiabank advisor Adrian Tauro, and the Certified General Accountants of Ontario.

In 2009, Frazer took on a challenging client, and one that would bring him into the spotlight: the Government of Alberta. Frazer and consultant James Blanchard were approached to lobby on behalf of the Government of Alberta’s interests—especially pertaining to the oil sands in northern Alberta. Frazer and Blanchard’s team was paid $40,000 per month for their work.

Frazer’s job, simply, was to monitor the American government to prevent another “Section 526.” The Section 526 provision to the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 forbids the U.S. government from buying the type of high-carbon fuels produced in Alberta’s oil sands. Canadian Embassy officials lobbied hard to weaken the language in the bill, and it shook the province’s business and politics to its core.

As part of his contract, Frazer brought Albertan officials to Washington—something not all clients do. “Frankly, it was just so that they could put a human face on some of this stuff”—“stuff” in this case being things like whole flocks of dead birds, destroyed wetlands, toxic spills, and ravaged landscapes.

Frazer has been fending off criticisms about representing Alberta ever since. At an alumni event in Washington this fall, grads chastised Frazer for his decision to take the province on as a client. “People raised their eyebrows and thought, ‘How could you represent Alberta on oil sands?”,” he says. “But I say, give me something to work with. We have a tap that will turn oil or gas on and off, but the tap for solar and wind is only giving a tiny bit right now.” His contract with the province ended last March and with a new government in Edmonton, Frazer is off the oil sands beat—for now.

Lobbying is more often than not considered ethically dubious, since there are lobbyists for practically every profession from teachers to cigarette companies. But University of British Columbia economics professor Matilde Bombardini says they’re often caught in a game of shoot the messenger.

“They’re the least trusted profession in the U.S., and yes, there are some that do illegal things,” she says. “But most operate within the boundaries. And they often produce information that is useful for policymakers.” John Chenier, former editor and publisher of the Ottawa-based publication The Lobby Monitor, says that lobbying is simply, “Games within games, wheels within wheels.” Of the ethics of lobbying on behalf of a highly controversial project like the oil sands, “I go back and forth,” says Chenier.

“One might judge someone lobbying for the tar sands as arguing on the side of the devils, rather than on the side of the angels. But many people in Alberta would disagree.” According to Chenier, the Government of Canada is this country’s largest spender on lobbying, and it has spent over $100 million in the U.S. and Europe lobbying other governments on environmental issues like softwood lumber exports and the Northern seal hunt.

But while we spend millions abroad, there are no Americans living in Ottawa full-time (as Frazer does in Washington), for the express purpose of lobbying Parliament Hill on American interests. Their embassy does most of the work in Ottawa, simply because our government is quick to consider U.S. interests without needing to be prompted. Decades of ever-tighter economic integration—from the Auto Pact to NAFTA to the proposed Great Lakes Partnership Council—means Canadian governments have no choice but to listen when American businesses speak. In the end it’s an American decision that will determine how the oil sands, and thus a considerable chunk of Canada’s economy, will proceed. “The decision in Washington on the Keystone XL pipeline could very well decide the fate of the tar sands,” says Chenier. “If you’re against it, it’s very important. If you’re for it, it’s very important. They could decide the development of northern Alberta, and in the process the environmental health of the world.”

“Americans don’t think of Canadians as foreign,” Frazer says. “You can take that one way or another. My perspective is to say run with it. Make it work for us.” He argues that Canada needs to be more bullish, in the American style. “Go in. Stand straight. Say your piece.”

David Biette, director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (where Frazer is a co-chair on the Institute’s advisory board), remembers a time when a client didn’t follow Frazer’s exact instructions on how to send thank-you cards after they returned to Canada. The next time they visited Washington, they were greeted with a frosty reception. “You can’t really say in Washington, ‘This is great for Canada’,” Biette says. “People look at you and reply, ‘I have a meeting…’ or something.”

That might be changing, though. After the federal election in May 2011, the Wilson Center held a discussion on what a Conservative majority means for Canada-U.S. relations. The house was packed, with an overflow crowd that couldn’t fit in the room.

“I wish I could be back in 1812 right now,” says Frazer, back in his office in Washington. “Or maybe 1814, and ask those Canadians what they think. I think they’d say we as Canadians did something nobody thought we could do.” Earlier this fall, it was announced that the Harper Conservatives had created an $11.5 million fund to recognize the history surrounding the War of 1812. The official commemoration will actually be a four-year process, culminating in 2015. New plaques will be mounted, monuments polished, battle re-enactments held, and plays and musical performances scheduled. In Canada, at least, the bicentennial is being trumpeted as a military victory that forged the nation that would eventually become Canada.

In the U.S., the conflict barely registers. “It doesn’t really have to do with whether it helped form your identity,” Biette explains. “It’s that it’s still part of your identity in 2012. That’s not so much here. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about a commemoration of the War of 1812—and that’s when we got the Star-Spangled Banner.”

It’s divides like these that Paul Frazer has made a career bridging, explaining their foreign northern neighbours to America’s political class. Whether you hate or love his line of work, he is among the most important, and poorly understood, figures linking our two countries. For better or worse, a lot depends on Paul Frazer—our man in Washington.