Quality assessment:
On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 4/5. Justification: I had enough time and background knowledge to treat my subject adequately.
Revision history:
UTC=20220823T094400Z/version 3.1.0: Kmo did some fine-tuning, and also added some remarks on the advisability of Campaign Cilevitz staffers contacting him (whether to inform, to encourage, or to admonish) by e-mail or telephone. - Kmo reserved the right to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 3.1.1, 3.1.2, ... .
UTC=20220823T085300Z/version 3.0.0: Kmo added several concluding paragraphs, urging Karen's door-to-door canvassers to answer voter questions fully, and to be alert to the possibility of Facebook view-blocking. - Kmo reserved the right to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 3.0.1, 3.0.2, ... .
UTC=20220823T052200Z/version 2.0.0: Taking advice from a member of the Catholic laity, Kmo removed lyrics for his two-stanza comic song ("Underneath the lamplight/ Pretty near the domes", to the tune of "Lily Marlene") which recapitulated first the 2007-through-2018 DDO conservation failure, then Karen's 2020-through-2022 fraud case. Kmo and his advisor reasoned that publication of his song would lead Karen in a pastorally inappropriate direction, contrary to the reflective interiority from which compassion for others, and a concomitant publicly articulated change of heart, will eventually emerge. - Kmo reserved the right to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 2.0.1, 2.0.2, ... .
UTC=20220821T175500Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . .
1. Philosophical background: why this casework matters to observers across the spectrum of democratic countries
Upon leaving my native Canada on 2018 October 29 to take up permanent residence in my ancestral Estonia as an Estonian citizen, I thought I had largely finished with Canadian public work. Now, however, that optimistic 2018 assessment looks premature. On 2022 August 19, a troubling matter from my Canadian past arose unexpectedly, in the person of Richmond Hill (Ontario) city councillor - and additionally, since July (as I explain below) convicted criminal - Karen Cilevitz. Once again I am obliged to discuss Cilevitz casework on this blog, now as a kind of object lesson for students of civics, both overseas in North America and here in the European Union.
As the ordinary middle class is foundational to any democracy, so also is its ordinary - its normally humdrum - municipal politics. We cannot have a functioning democracy, whether in Estonia or in Canada or elsewhere, if our municipal life is compromised. As of 2022 August 19, the municipal life of Richmond Hill, in the Canadian province of Ontario, has come under threat. So bad is the suddenly emerging problem that I am obliged to discuss the Cilevitz file on this blog, as an object lesson for friends of democracy everywhere.
2. Legal and political background
2.1 Karen's 2022 July criminal conviction
Richmond Hill City 2014-through-2022 Councillor Karen Cilevitz, a David Dunlap Observatory (DDO) heritage-conservation activist from 2007 to 2011, but subsequently a proponent of a 14-street, roughly 530-home, subdivision which destroyed 32 hectares of the 76.5-hectare David Dunlap Observatory greenspace, was arrested on 2020 December 15 on a matter unconnected with DDO conservation. Karen was charged with fraud over 5000 CAD and breach of public trust, in casework reported in the local, regional, and metropolitan press, and reported nationally at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/richmond-hill-councillor-charged-1.5842277. The charges stemmed from payments allegedly totalling 21,384.68 CAD, allegedly taken from the 37,000 CAD municipal compensation of her sometime municipal assistant Ms P. Burton-Garcia and conveyed to her present spouse, Mr D. Christie. Karen's court appearances in connection with the arrest were put into the Ontario Court of Justice (Newmarket) docket for 2021 April 01, 2021 August 05, 2021 September 16, 2021 October 07, 2021 November 04, 2021 December 01, 2022 January 20, 2022 March 17, 2022 May 10, and 2022 July 11, as case 4911998210139202. On her 2022 July 11 court day, Karen pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of fraud under 5000 CAD, with the Crown's original charges withdrawn. On or around 2022 July 12, as reported in various media outlets (for instance, at https://www.canadianfraudnews.com/richmond-hill-councillor-karen-cilevitz-guilty-to-fraud-under-5000-and-sentenced-to-house-arrest-and-restitution/) Karen received a conditional three-month sentence, requiring her to stay at home between the hours of 22:00 and 06:00 except in case of emergency.
2.2 Karen's declaration of candidacy in 2022 October municipal elections
I, and I would imagine most other students of Richmond Hill civics, imagined in July that this was the end of the sordid matter. I reasoned that although Karen might or might not finish the remaining five months of her term as a City Councillor, she would in any case not be so impaired in her ethical judgement as to run for office during the upcoming municipal election of 2022 October.
The month immediately following her guilty plea passed placidly enough. I did note, to my surprise, that an anonymous flier was being distributed in Karen's ward, calling for her resignation, and I reacted with private revulsion (as many surely did) to the anonymity of the flier. Further, I did note the publication of a well reasoned letter-to-editor at https://www.yorkregion.com/opinion-story/10687542-we-elect-lawmakers-not-lawbreakers-richmond-hill-reader/, calling for Karen's resignation, as the distasteful flier already had, but published in an ethically correct way with an explicit attribution of authorship.
Over that month, I kept checking the City of Richmond Hill elections Web material, to make sure that Karen was now doing the reasonable thing, by refraining from candidacy. Fortunately, there proved to be by mid-August no shortage of candidates running in Ward Five.
All will imagine, then, my shock, in performing a supposedly routine almost-final check on 2022 August 20, to find that on 2022 August 19 (the last possible date) Karen had declared herself a candidate.
3. Legal admissibility of criminal candidacy upheld: not some "Nanny State", but the local citizens, must act
Some, especially in jurisdictions outside Canada, will now ask: how is such a thing even possible? how can a freshly convicted criminal, still serving her three-month sentence, run for municipal office? Such a thing seems, so far as my hasty and limited researches go, to be not possible in the UK. It is, on the other hand, possible in the USA, and again it is possible in Canada. Indeed I would suggest that on this point the civic philosophies of the USA and Canada are superior to the civic philosophy of the UK.
In the spirit of what Catholic analysts-of-governance call "subsidiarity", we must have all decisions taken at the lowest possible level. In Church terms, if a thing can be settled at the level of the diocese, rather than at the level of the Vatican, then it should be so settled; if it can be settled at the level of a parish, rather than at the level of the diocese, then similarly it is the parish that must decide. Translating this good idea (arguably, not always implemented in Catholic ecclesial governance, but nevertheless widely endorsed in Catholic analysis), we have the following: If a secular civic thing can be settled by individual voters in an individual municipal precinct, then it should be so settled, without "Nanny State" intervention from law-makers at some higher level of government. So yes, by all means: let our central governments impose no bar to the candidacy of recently convicted criminals. Let the question be settled at the grassroots level, in the rough and free court of local public opinion. Although sometimes things will go wrong, such is the price of our freedom from the potentially dangerous, because potentially enervating, Nanny.
4. Strategies for healing
4.1 A brusque strategy: defeat Karen electorally, through opposing her on the hustings
Karen surely consulted privately with others before taking her disastrous decision, so injurious to the provincial, national, and even international reputation of Richmond Hill, and so liable to bolster and reinforce voter cynicism. But something in those private consultations failed. How, now, to work for healing?
A brusque and savage healing will come if Karen first conducts a 2022 campaign on the hustings as in 2010 (when she lost), in 2014 (when she won), and in 2018 (when she won), and then gets fair-and-square defeated at the 2022 polls.
If it comes to campaigning on the hustings, then I would urge Karen's opponents to note that Karen is liable, in a repeat of her 2014 and 2018 campaign-literature inaccuracies, to try portraying herself as a DDO conservationist. This is a point on which she must be corrected in the spirit of lawyer-detective Perry Mason, who is remembered for saying in court, "Just the facts, Ma'am, just the facts. "
A legally robust factual record can be had from my pair of sites https://karen-vs-toomas-blog.ca/ and http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/. Both are retrievable from Google through the search phrase "karen vs toomas blog". I produced that pair of Web sites a little before Karen's initial election to Council, in 2014. My 2014 purpose was to warn 2014 voters that here was a political opportunist, more concretely a fake conservationist, who had worked in a duly ethical way in concert with other community groups for conservation of the full 76.5-hectare DDO greenspace up to and a little beyond her unsuccessful 2010 election campaign, but in the difficult emotional wake of her 2010 defeat had begun working for a commercial interest, the "Corsica" directed by members of the DeGasperis and Muzzo property-development families as a subsidiary of what was then known as "Metrus" (and has in more recent years assumed the name "DG Group").
The physical fruits of this unethical enterprise, for which Karen served as an unpaid political cheerleader, are advertised at https://myobservatoryhill.ca/. Have a look, folks, and marvel (be you in Canada, in Estonia, in Russia, in the USA, in the UK, or wherever): it's the advertising copy that starts with the words "Welcome to Observatory Hill, a luxurious master-planned community in South Richmond Hill's last remaining piece of picturesque land. It's a place that's to be built on the astronomical past of the David Dunlap Observatory /.../" Here, with those McMansions on the new "Night Sky Court" so close to the DDO telescopes (I would presume destined to be a guarded, gated, enclave in the desperate, class-ridden, dog-eat-dog, decaying society of 2090), and with those Lancashire-style rowhouses a little further away (in 2090, I imagine these will look like George Orwell's 1930s "Road to Wigan Pier"), on streets with such offensive names as "Milky Way Drive" (specially offensive because visibility of the Milky Way is an early casualty of light pollution) is the sprawling roughly 530-home DeGasperis-Muzzo creation, approved at the Ontario Municipal Board by Karen's team among others, with the organization under her direction even venturing so far as to argue against conservationists in Board proceedings.
A caveat: when I here write of Karen's anti-DDO "work", I do not mean "work for pay", but "work" in the sense in which an unpaid person can "work for good table manners", or can "work for harmony in the family", or can "work for higher standards in public life".
And when I here write "legally robust", I mean "presumptively immune from challenge by Karen's lawyer, because accepted by her lawyer and my lawyer in the protracted out-of-court negotiations of 2014 as my best effort at laying out all the facts in our case, to a length of tens of thousands of words, with all the appropriate e-mail quotations, all the appropriate Web screenshots, with all the detail I could muster".
At a handful of places in this legally robust documentation, Karen's political opponents, whom I am today seeking to help, will find some material typeset not in black but in red. The occasional red words mark places in which I had to change what I initially published about Karen in 2014, when she put her Web domain karencilevitz.ca up for public auction (she had not troubled to renew her expiring domain), and I bid successfully for it at public auction under Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) rules. In that initial publication, I used my just-acquired domain karencilevitz.ca to document Karen's DDO work, but under the terms of our eventual out-of-court settlement transferring my writing from that domain to https://karen-vs-toomas-blog.ca/. Karen, understandably vexed when in 2011 I told her in a café chat what I had done, over-reacted by threatening legal action both against me and against CIRA. Karen, CIRA, and I settled out of court, in a 2014 negotiating process which saw me changing my text at a handful of places. I elected to mark my changes in red, and I generated a change log (enabling readers to compare my changes with my original wording) at http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/GNOA____20140505__settlement_schedule_a.pdf.
So, I say to Karen's opponents (my philosophical allies) on the hustings, as they work in the spirit of Perry Mason to uncover the squalid truth about Karen's DDO work: do not be puzzled about the red; just be ready for its occasional appearance, standing poised for an occasional consultation of http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/GNOA____20140505__settlement_schedule_a.pdf.
Before quite finishing the matter of to https://karen-vs-toomas-blog.ca and http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/ , I remark for the benefit of Karen's lawyer that just as I take care not to communicate any contents of the Minutes of Settlement orally, as at an auditorium or studio microphone (a requirement in our out-of--court settlement, at http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/GNNN____20140505__settlement_body.pdf), so also I take care not to comment, whether orally or in writing, on our terms of settlement (again, a requirement in our out-of-court settlement). It will be found on analysis of this present blogspot posting that I make no comment on our terms, confining myself merely to reporting the fact of a settlement and reporting in writing on some of the contents. Whether the terms are fair or unfair, whether I have triumphantly upheld Canadian freedom of expression or cravenly surrendered (or something in between) - on these points, which would indeed constitute a commentary on the terms, I am here mute. The sole commentary permitted to me is in the document available at http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/GNOC____20140505__settlement_schedule_c.pdf. The sole commentary permitted to Karen is in the document available as http://www.karen-vs-toomas-legaldocs.ca/GNOD____20140505__settlement_schedule_d.pdf. I have not commented on the terms, and neither to my knowledge has Karen. In reporting on the fact of a settlement, I am here doing what Karen herself did also, in her online essay of 2014 August 02, as reproduced in an "Appendix" to https://karen-vs-toomas-blog.ca/20141216T162316Z____blogpost/NNNN____20141216T162316Z____blogpost__main.html.
4.2 The optimal strategy: give initiative to Karen's campaign team
The brusque and savage strategy may, in the end, prove the sole viable avenue for Canadian friends of democracy.
But mindful of the hope clause in Saint Paul's 1 Cor 13:7 account of ἀγάπη ("It endures everything, believes everything, hopes everything /.../," we must for the time being stay attuned to happier possibilities. So I herewith reiterate all my various appeals to Karen for reconciliation since 2014, including not only the ageing https://karen-vs-toomas-blog.ca/, but also the more up-to-date http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/. Can Karen's lawyer, in particular, now write to my Estonian lawyer, Mr Andrus Lillo of Lillo&Lõhmus, Tartu (http://www.advokaadid.ee/index.php?lang=eng), as andrus@advokaadid.ee, asking for a lifting of the personal-communications ban imposed by our 2014 out-of-court settlement?
If it is too hard for Karen to direct her lawyer to reach out to Mr Andrus Lillo here in Estonia, then Karen can work for healing by indicating sorrow for her misjudgement in running for 2022 public office, in this action respectfully asking Ward Five voters to ignore the presence of her name on the ballot paper, and perhaps also indicating which of the other candidates she now endorses.
If, in turn, this line of community restitution proves too hard for Karen, then she can work for healing in the manner I have urged on some non-heroic Russians in the current Ukraine disaster: do not attempt what is beyond your unaided spiritual and emotional strength; continue doing what your position calls on you to do, but do not do it very well. In Ukraine, that means (to take two hypothetical examples) "accidentally" spilling lots of precious fuel in resupplying one's Red Army tank column, or arriving at 13.58 for the Syrian mercenaries-with-Red Army rendez-vous which was scheduled for 13.21. In Richmond Hill, that simply means not campaigning very hard. Karen has to be home by 22.00 under the terms of her three-month criminal sentence. Very well, then: let her be ever so prudent in this matter, taking care in what the Canadian police are pleased to call "an abundance of caution" to be home from her hustings by 21:00, even by 20:30.
Parallel points apply to such people as are still willing to serve as assistants in a Cilevitz campaign. If you have the strength, then dissociate yourself from the campaign after your first few days of service, defecting eloquently and visibly, rather as Geneva diplomat Boris Bondarev did when protesting the 2022 Ukraine operation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Bondarev). If you additionally want to write a visible declaration of principle, you are welcome to do so here at toomaskarmo.blogspot.com, by way of a comment-on-blog-posting, or even by way of a freestanding guest essay (in both cases first e-mailing your material to toomas.karmo@gmail.com, and in both cases following the "Tripartite Identity Requirement" and the "Courtesy Requirement" which I laid out on 2016 April 14 for would-be commentators and would-be essayists at http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/search/label/AAAA--blog_intro).
If, on the other hand, you lack the spiritual and emotional strength for this grueling kind of community service, then simply do your work less with regard to political expediency than with regard to political integrity. You may wish to cut back on the number of hours you donate to door-to-door canvassing, for a candidate in whom you now lack full confidence. Or still better, you may choose to do the very thing which Karen, during my 2010 door-to-door canvassing on her behalf, at that point arguably lacked the strength to do. In 2010, I found that she tried to make the door-to-door encounter brief, a matter of less than sixty seconds, ending once the resident verbally assured her of a supporting vote. In contrast with this, I say: be a strong public-spirited citizen, and likewise encourage Karen to be a strong public-spirited citizen. Anxiety and confusion will run high in Ward Five. Your mission in 2022 is to do what in my experience Karen was not inclined to do when I accompanied her on the hustings in 2010, namely to linger on each doorstep.
In ensuring that questions get answered in adequate detail, you will want to refer voters to Karen's Facebook pages - both the one which in the second half of August had a little over 1000 followers and the more personal one which around that same time had a little under 100 followers. In your conversation, direct attention to Karen's newspaper-published explanation that she was driven by financial pressure to commit her fraud, and additionally to her Facebook explanation that she spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers as she sought to defend herself. If your interlocutor asks how she can have been in financial desperation when docked for over 300 days' salary as a punishment from the City of Richmond Hill for her pre-fraud actions, and yet also can have had hundreds of thousands of dollars after the fraud was perpetrated, recommend to them that they phone her team on 416-806-7582, making an appointment to chat with her personally. Also, prepare for this robust line of questioning by checking in with Karen yourself, learning from her how she herself resolves the seeming discrepancy, and doing your best to guide her now in the direction of financial transparency. You can point out to Karen that she herself may in due course find the courage and strength to write on Facebook a more careful account of how her lawyers were financed. (For my part, I know nothing, and I am baffled. We know that the authorities pegged the total fraud, in the charges as initially brought, not in the hundreds of thousands, let alone in the millions, but merely at the above-cited figure of 21,384.68 CAD. I do not see any reason for doubting the calculations of the authorities. Was some business entity, unknown to me, willing to make a loan? Or did Karen's own family, whom I do not know beyond a few rather casual encounters ending in 2014, chip in? )
In your perhaps challenging five-minute doorstep chat, you will additionally want to underscore the importance of checking whether Karen is blocking your particular interlocutor from viewing her Facebook materials (as she appears to be blocking me from viewing them: although I managed to get help in circumventing Karen's block, by fully legal means, in other words in learning what she has been posting, I should not have been driven to this extreme). If your interlocutor finds viewing of Karen's Facebook materials blocked, then point out that while Karen's blocking action is legal, it runs contrary to ordinary Ontario democratic principles. Consider at that point encouraging the lodging of reports with Elections Ontario (1-888-668-8683; info@elections.on.ca), the Richmond Hill Liberal, and the CBC.
And do of course consider supplying me with campaign updates, encouragement, admonitions - with any kind of feedback at all, as may prove convenient and safe for you - either via Toomas.Karmo@gmail.com or via my shirt-pocket cellular phone here in Estonia. The phone is reached from Canada under the 14-digit number 011-372-5864-6540. Incoming calls may or may not be recorded by me. Note that Richmond Hill summer time lags Estonia summer time by seven hours. If for some reason I in my carelessness fail to pick up a voice call, send an SMS text, asking me to phone you back, and stating your number. (It is important to state your number when transmitting that international SMS. Experience indicates that the Estonian phone system cannot be expected always to log the number of a missed incoming international call. If I merely see on my phone a record of a missed call from an "unknown number", I will not be able to help you.)
In the long run, when Karen is defeated, she will see that as a properly public-spirited member of her election team, you were trying in your own circumscribed way to serve also her own highest and best interests, as a loyal friend must do.
==END OF CURRENT BLOGSPOT POSTING==
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