Overall is 10 pages + one schedule

Question 1. (One page)

 

Watch this film: Jhally, Sut. Edward Said on Orientalism. 1998. Youtube. October 28, 2012. 

Has this film changed the way you think about some movies/films/images you have seen in the past?  If so, which ones?

Question 2. ( Three Pages) The file in the bottom 

 

Students will submit a series of reflections on the course material for grading.  These reflections may take any form, but must include: 1) reference to the course material or one theoretical concept for the week and 2) relation to one’s personal life and/or a  popular culture example.  Reflections may take the form of: a written  paper, a video or vlog post, a song, podcast, zine, or any other form of  creative work.  In the case of visual artistic submissions, a short  paragraph may accompany the work to demonstrate the connections to the  course material and personal life and/or popular culture.

Students  may submit up to 7 reflection journal entries for grading.  Reflection  journals will be assessed using the ICE rubric attached.  The top 5  grades will be used in calculating the students grade for the 25% of the  reflection journals’ component.  Students may collaborate with up to  four people in up to 2 reflection journal entries.  Students who choose  to collaborate on reflection journal entries will receive the exact same  grade as their collaborators. 

Reflection  journal entries should be no more than 3 pages in length if they are  written, or 5 minutes in length if they are produced in another form, if  you have questions about length with respect to another art form,  please contact the instructor.  Reflection journal entries should be  handed in prior to the start of the class.  Electronic submissions  through blackboard are preferred, however, if the reflection is a  physical form, it should be handed in right at the beginning of the  class.  Each reflection journal entry should use the theory and concepts  for the class that is about to commence.

Question 3. (Two Pages)

Read some recent articles (or watch some news reports) on Bitcoin.

Imagine you are a financial advisor. A group of investors asks you to explain the significance of Bitcoin and to advise them on whether or not to invest in Bitcoin. Write a response to the investors’ group describing the significance of Bitcoin and your investment recommendations (approximately 500 words). Remember, there is no “right” answer but do use some examples, statistics, or other evidence in your write-up. Be sure to cite your references in case your classmates are interested in reading the articles or watching the clips.

Question 4. ( One schedule ) There are two examples in the bottom

 Use Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to analyze a company of your choice.

Identify at least one advantage and one disadvantage of using this model.

Question 5. ( Four Pages) The example and the instructions in the bottom

  

Assignment. Write a Case Analysis. Select one case from the list provided. This is an individual effort – no group writing is permitted.

Scenario. You are a departmental manager in a medium sized firm. The CEO is reviewing and updating the firm’s policies. The CEO has asked you to draft a Case Analysis in order to provide policy guidance to meet the firm’s legal obligations.

Structure. Draft paper in 4 parts: Introduction, Rules, Analysis, Conclusion. 

Introduction. Set out the aim of the paper in one clear sentence. For example: “The aim of this analysis is to provide the legal background for the adoption of a firm-wide harassment program”. Complete the paragraph with a short restatement of the problem; give it context.

Rules.  Set out the legal regime that guides your policy development. Explain how the regulations govern policy options.

Analysis. Describe the tension between the regime and the current situation. Explain the consequences to the firm of the outcome of the case.

Conclusion. Summarise your findings and recommend reasonable and viable policy options for the CEO.

Layout. Introduction: 2 paragraphs at most. Rules: as much as it takes to clearly explain the law. Analysis: the main effort – 2 to 2.5 pages. Conclusion and your recommendation: 3 to 4 paragraphs should do it. You are writing for a busy CEO, so be concise and clear.

Volume. 4 pages maximum. At about 250 words per page in double-spaced 12 point font and normal formatting, you will have about 900 – 1000 words.

It’s N o t About the Sex

ization and Queerness in Ellen
and The Ellen Degeneres Show
MARUSYA BOClURKlW

Cette auteure examine les analogies raciales et les juxtaposi-
tions employkes dans la reprhsentation de Eden Degeneres
comme uedette de tklkuision lesbienne. I l y eut au dkbut une
sortie du placard hyper rkaliste du personnage Ellen Morgan
b La tklkuision en 1977 et comme conclusion elle analyse les
gestes qui sont la marque de Degeneres, quand elle anime son
kmission * The Ellen Defeneres Show a. L huteure uoit h –
trauers l’bistoire de la reprksentation des lesbiennes, des
images trks racistes quand h normalitk est inuoquhe.

0 prah: Okay, soyou saw Ellen across a crowdedroom.. .

Anne Heche: Ifell in love with aperson.

Oprah: And felt, what, some kind of sexual attrac-
tion, you felt sexually attracted to her.

Anne Heche: Idon ‘tthink it was, immediately, asexual
amaction . . . you know, souls connect and there i s a time
when souls come together and they are just meant to be.
I was no moresulprised than anyone else, I mean, it was
just incredible, my soul was meant to be with hers and
that was all that mattered. I looked beyond the sex. In
loue there is no sex, there is no segregation, there is no
anything, there is just loue.

-1nterviewwithAnne Heche and Ellen
Degeneres on Oprah April 28,1997

When a blonde, female Hollywood star, speaking to a
television audience of millions, says love is not about sex,
she’s speaking from a long and durable tradition. The fact
that she’s just come out as a lesbian, however, creates some
interesting twists to her story.

This essay will examine the hypperreal coming out of
Ellen Degeneres and her sitcom character, Ellen Morgan,
on broadcast television in 1997, and the significance ofthe
racialized analogies employed in that narrative. I will also
trace the continuing trajectory ofEllen Degeneres as “gayn

star, whose latest television incarnation is as host ofNBC
daytime talk show, The E h n Degeneres Show. I will discuss
the ways in which, throughout the history of lesbian
representation, excessively racialized images mark narra-
tive junctures where normalcy has been put into question.
Further, the projection of sexuality onto racialized figures
is a way forwhiteness to represent, yet also dissociate itself,
from its (abnormal?) desires. Indeed, as the opening quote
to this paper implies, aleitmotifof Degeneres’ and Heche’s
(her then new love interest) media interviews during the –
coming-out period was a bizarre denial of the sexual
nature oftheir relationship. Historically, white femininity
has frequently been represented as that which transcends
the sexual “fallibility” of the body itself (Dyer). Richard
Dyer writes that white women’s “very whiteness, their
refinement, makes sexuality a disturbance of their racial
purity” (29). Or, to repeat Heche’s comments: “My soul
was meant to be with hers and that was all that mattered.
I looked beyond the sex.”

From nineteenth-century painting to twenty-first cen-
tury television, the representation of lesbianism has been
dependant on othersignifiers of otherness-race, class, the
grotesque-for its visibility. In the ABC series Ellen, and
particularly in the narrative of her “real-life” and televisual
coming out, these contradictions were played across the
sexualized body of the black woman and the desexualized
white lesbian body.

The dialogic relation of sexuality and race has a long
history within representation. Sander Gilman examined
the history of the iconic Black servant figure in nine-
teenth-century painting, who appeared at the margins of
the white bourgeois imaginary and functioned to sexual-
ize the culture that surrounds her. Similarly, James Snead
has written about a recurring motif in Hollywood cin-
ema of the 1930s and ’40s in which Black female servants
dress or groom white women. In particular, he locates
this motif in the films of Mae West, who “achieves much
of her sex-goddess stature with the complicity, even

176 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME

encouragement, of Black women. Swarthy and elemental,
black women can elevate by contrast West’s white and
ethereal beauty” (67).

Gilman argued further that mid-nineteenth-century
sexology made certain assumptions about Black female
sexuality: that the “overdeveloped genitals of Black women
(based on autopsies of the Hottentot Venus and others)
led to sexual excess: “the concupiscense ofthe black is thus
associated also with the sexuality of the lesbian” (237).
Similar studies of the prostitute in the late nineteenth
century linked the prostitute, the Black woman, and the

devotee, a heterosexual. Ellen’s sitcom character was the
bearer of discourse, upsetting the equilibrium of the plot,
usually by posing as something she wasn’t. As Frank
Krutnick and Stephen Neale have written: “Gags are
suited to the articulation of ineptitude and frustration,
because they are suited to the articulation of failure” (59).
Like Lucy Ricardo’s fictional failure at being a star, Ellen’s
failure at gestures of heteronormativity produced laughter
at anticipation of their inevitable failure. In comedy, the
comic’s body is structured as the site of dis-ordering and
re-ordering of the symbolic order. Ellen’s implicit queer-

The camic’s body is structured as the site of dis-ordering and
re-ordering of the symbolic order. Ellenrs queerness provided

the disequilibriurn; the failure and self-deprecation restore
the equilibrium-the hierarchy of bodies-heterasexual

over queex; classical over grotesque.

lesbian through “physical abnormalities” and “mannish-
ness” (245). Judith Mayne was one of the first film
theorists to write about this issue in the context of femi-
nism and queer theory. In an article about the work of
Hollywood director Dorothy Arzner, she discussed cer-
tain scenes from Arzner’s Dance Girl Dance which illus-
trate how

racial stereotypes occur when the sexual hierarchy of
the look is deflected or otherwise problematized . . .
the racial stereotype afiirms the distinction between
white subject and black object, just when the distinc-
tion between male subject and female object is being
put into question . . . [indicating] a disturbing fit
between sexual and racial codes of performance.
(195).

Ellen, which premiered on ABC in 1994 as These
Friends ofMine was conceived as a star vehicle for Ellen
Degeneres, who had by then achieved moderate acclaim as
a stand-up comedian with a Seinfeld-esque interest in
everyday situations, and a Lucille Ball-like talent for
physical comedy. O n TV, she played a naive, idealistic
bookstore manager with a circle of kooky friends and, like
Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy (to whom she was often
compared), a knack for getting into trouble. Initially, the
series had her friends and family constantly setting her up
with a man. For example, the synopsis of episode three
(April 6,1994) ran thus: “Ellen answers a personal ad and
meets the man of her dreams. But when it comes to
kissing, Mr. Right is all wrong” ( E h n , Previously These
Friends of Mine).

Until her coming out project became more explicit, the
running gag in Ellen was her pretense: pretending to be a

gourmet cook, an animal rights activist, a health spa

ness provided the d i ~ e ~ u i l i b r i u m ; the failure and self-
deprecation restore the equilibrium-the hierarchy of
bodies-heterosexual over queer, classical over grotesque.
Ellen’s and Lucy’s ineptitude, expressedvia physical move-
ment, was a gag that spoke where the (gagged) mouth
couldn’t-the plot, turning on these bodily attributes,
turned also on silent rage, grotesque excess, and a kind of
productive disequilibrium, a constant and contradictory
shifting of the female comic’s bodily integrity and balance
that creates a moving target of her stardom. Like Lucy
Ricardo’s “avoided emotion” expressed via the body, the
running gag of Ellen’s social awkwardness managed to
interpellate a range of audiences.

The lead-up to Ellen Degeneres’ coming out episode on
May 30,1997 was lengthy and full of campy innuendo. It
was the mid-1 990s, high point of lesbian chic. The period
was inaugurated by a June 2 l , 1993 Newsweek cover, with
the heading “Lesbians: Coming O u t Strong,” accompa-
nied by an image oftwo women embracing. By 1997, k.d.
lang had finally come out; Melissa Etheridge and Martina
Navritalova were following suit.’ In the wake of a homo-
phobic smear campaign directed at public arts funding in
the U.S.,’ and cutbacks to Canada Council’s arts funding,
the narrow cultural space afforded queerness was a decid-
edly pop cultural one. Ellen’s physical comedy expressed
the absurdities of closeted celebrity at the same time that
it reinforced cultural fears of a homosexual menace.

As Sigmund Freud has pointed out, jokes can open the
door to that which is repressed (182). The naif “enjoy[s]
a liberty that they would otherwise not be granted [. . .]
pleasure arises through the lifting of internal inhibitions”
(1 84- 185). The audience’s laughter is produced through
a process of empathy with, and superiority over, the
child-like comic, whose excessive physical activity dis-

arms us:

VOLUME 24, NUMBERS 2,3

177

The answer to the question of why we laugh at the

clown’s movements is that they seem to us extrava-
gant and inexpedient. We are laughing at an expendi-
ture that is too large. (Freud 190)

Indeed, representations of Ellen as she publicly an-
nounced her lesbianism became more and more childlike.
O n an April 14, 1997 cover of Time Magazine she was
photographed from a high angle, the perspective of an
adult looking down at a child. Ellen was in a crouched,
rather than standing position, and smiled up at the

“left-handed,” or, “there’s a guy named Les Bian”. Inter-

estingly, since the word lesbian is rarely used in main-
stream culture, the metonymic equivalents served a pur-
pose, like Freud’s naif who mispronounces a word and
creates uninhibited laughter, thus saying what the adults
couldn’t. But the Lebanese references were only the begin-
ning ofan increasing number ofanalogies to race. Degeneres
ended her Time Magazineinterview by saying: “Maybe 1’11
find something even bigger to do later on. Maybe I’ll
become b l a c k (50). O n the TV show 60 Minutes,
Degeneres compared herself to civil rights activist Rosa

Ellen’s coming out functioned as a valorization of the normal,
recruited to the service of class hegemony. While Clinton

demonized welfare mothers, EIIen Morgan was
simultaneously coming out and buying real estate.

camera. The heading was redolent of innocence and
naivete: “Yup, I’m gay.” Since childhood and white femi-
ninity are desexualized in this culture, Ellen, in order to
come out, had to both disavow and claim hers.

The hour-long coming-out episode was given the (also
childlike) code name, “Puppy Episode.” In it, Ellen got
together for dinner with ex-lover Richard (Steven
Eckholdt), who brought along his co-worker, Susan (Laura
Dern). Susan’s revelation that she is gay propelled Ellen,
who was attracted to her, on her own voyage of self-
discovery. In true lesbian style, Ellen began seeing a
therapist (Oprah Winfrey), and eventually came out, not
only to her friends, but, unintentionally, to an entire
airport via a public address system. A dazzling cast of
celebrities, including Melissa Etheridge, Gina Gershon,
k.d. lang, Demi Moore, Jenny Shimizu, Billy Bob
Thornton and Dwight Yoakam, appeared in cameo roles.3

While “gayn was heard several times in the episode, the
word “lesbian” was used only once, in a dream sequence
featuring the comedic but nightmarish repetition of the
word by zombie-like supermarket employees. In her Time
Magazineinterview, Ellen unconsciously linked lesbian to
its disease-ridden archetypal twin, the prostitute. “Until
recently I hated the word lesbian . . . [it] sounded like
somebody with some kind of disease” (Handy 45).

O n several talkshows, Degeneres grappled for aracialized
analogy, uttering quips like: “I’m coming out as . ..
Lebanese.” Like so many of Degeneres’ jokes, this one is
an intertextual reference to an earlier T V show, The
Golden Girh. Jean comes to visit and develops a crush on
Rose. By way of explanation, Rose tells her roommate
Blanche that Jean’s a lesbian. “So,” says Blanche, “isn’t
Danny Thomas one?” Rose replies: “Not Lebanese,
Blanche, Lesbian!”

Degeneres also quipped that she was coming out as

Parks. In the coming out episode itself, a recurring therapy
scene with Black talk-show host Oprah playing the thera-
pist, played an iconic role:

Ellen: Do you think that I want to be discriminated
against? Do you think that I want people calling me
names to my face?

OprahITherapist: Have people commit hate crimes
againstyou just because you ‘re not like them.. .

Ellen: Thankyou!

Oprah: To have to use separate washrooms andseparate
waterfountains, and sit in the back of the bus.. . .

Ellen: Oh man, we have to useseparate waterfountains?

What makes this scene funny is that Ellen doesn’t “get”
Oprah’slthe therapist’s very liberal point-that the op-
pression that Ellen fears is exactly what Black folks have
been experiencing for quite some time. While the thera-
pist is deeply aware of both Black and gay oppression,
Ellen sees only what gays experience, and seems oddly
oblivious to the entire span of Black civil rights history in
America. Here, Ellen’s whiteness reappropriates and con-
sumes the Black gaze as part of its re-expansion-made
necessary in order for her white feminininity to incorpo-
rate an excessive lesbian sexuality.

Oprah also served a secondary function on the Elen
show (and in her talk show interview with Degeneres and
Heche). By playing a therapist, a version of what Sharon
Willis has called “the ubiquitious African American judge
or police chief, a peripheral figure granted limited screen
time and almost no point ofview” (9, Oprah represented

178 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESlLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME

the other side of the criminalized Black body. Oprah was
heavily marked as African in this scene through clothing,
jewellery and decor. While the background for single
shots of either Oprah or Ellen were neutral, two-shots of
this scene revealed furniture with vivid African markings
almost splitting the screen. “The nation has to have
something to delineate itself against,” writes Sally Munt
(36). Oprah’s body was situated at the permeable bound-
ary of national representability. Her Africanness made
Ellen appear, by contrast more white, but her body size
had a function as well. As a large woman whose extra-
diegetic struggles with weight are infamous, Oprah’s body
was unruly and grotesque in relation to Ellen’s, Anne’s,
and Susan’s uniformly slender, classical bodies. Peter
Stallybrass and Allon White point out that fear of bodily
excess, or fat, is also a fear of the lower bodily stratum
(185). In this case, Oprah stood in for that fear.

Finally, Degeneres’ coming out was also resolved by an
appeal to the abject. Just as stories about Lucille Ball’s
difficult, poverty-stricken childhood were trotted out
during her rise to stardom and corporate power, Degeneres,
in her Oprah appearance, managed to dredge up some
equally sad stories ofher own, responding to what Kathleen
K. Rowe has called “the cultural preference for women’s
tears over their laughter” (2 14).

Ellen: Finally I told [my father that I was a lesbian]-
well, actually, he told me-and then they asked me to
move out of the house.

Oprah: Because.. . .

Ellen: She had two little girls and t h y worried that it
would influence them.. . .

Oprah: So you moved out of the house-and moved
where, Ellen?

Ellen: They CO-signed a loan to get an apartment and
you know, still evevything was fine except t h y didn’t
want me living in the house with the two little girls
which, y’know, really hurt czlz I loved ’em. But … I
understood it. I understand people not understanding
[lesbianism]. I’m fine with it.

Abjectness is here embellished with an unspoken cul-
tural charge: that lesbians prey on young girls. Degeneres’s
coming out was also juxtaposed with child suicide. Several
times during her one-hour show focusing on Ellen’s
coming out, Diane Sawyer of 60 Minutes repeated ex-
tremely high (and unattributed) statistics on the suicide of
gay and lesbian youth. Whiteness, the colour that is really
no colour, is immaterial, weightless, death-like. As Dyer
has pointed out, associations with whiteness dating back
to Victorian conventions of photography include a maca-

bre romance surrounding the death of children (208).

As Ellen’s queerness became more visible, first through
heavy-handed innuendo, and finally through a literal
ontological claim, the audience’s epistemophila, or desire
to know, was placed in crisis, for “disavowal and the desire
to know are always coextensive” (Neale 42). The audience
was caught between these two opposing drives. Ellen’s
closeted lesbianism had by now become the “necessary
secret” within the classic structure of narrative-the secret
which the audience wanted, and didn’t want, revealed. In
order to produce narrative suspense, the secret must be
equally distributed among and between characters and
spectators. Once the secret is found out, the narrative
ends. “The comic is plural, unfinalized,” (244) writes
Murray Healy, following Bakhtin. By completing her
character, and filling in all the holes of knowledge and
narrative desire, Ellen’s character became unfunny-the
comedic structure had been lost. In one of the few critical
commentaries to emerge out of the gay press (and later
reprinted in the Globe and Mail), Toronto critic Rachel
Giese wrote:

The ironic truth is that Ellen (either one) was more
interesting before she was out. Her tomboy clothes,
her disdain for the conventions of heterosexuality
and her charming nebbishness were much more of a
sly critique of straight TV properties-in which
single women must be obsessed with men and tradi-
tionally pretty-than the tepid, positive role model
that the new, out Ellen promises to be. (C2)

In the reverse logic of neo-liberal conservatism, Ellen’s
coming out functioned as a valorization of the normal,
recruited to the service of class hegemony. While Clinton
demonized welfare mothers and ended “welfare as we
know it,” Ellen Morgan was simultaneously coming out
and buying real estate: her two actions were narratively
resented as inextricable. While unprecedented cutbacks
to the National Endowment for the Arts and the Canada
Council for the Arts shrank already meagre resources for
queer independent cinema, Degeneres used her consider-
able cultural space to decry “the lisp thing,” “dykes on
bikes or those men dressed as women,” declaring on the
pages of Time: “I don’t want them representing the entire
gay community” (Handy 50).

The 1997198 season ofEllen that followed was perhaps,
as Anna McCarthy has claimed, more interesting than the
coming out episode itself. While the actual fact of being a
lesbian on TV is not as singular as Time Magazine would
have had us believe, it was the very ordinariness, indeed
blandness of Ellen Morgan-as-lesbian that was a first for
the small screen. Less Rosa Parks than Ward Cleaver, the
post-coming out narrative of Ellen was determinedly
domestic, and included a !girlfriend, a kid, a supportive
family and friends. If, as McCarthy points out, the coming
out narrative functioned (as have many a queer TV
moment) as a ceremonial interruption of television flow,

VOLUME 24, NUMBERS 2,3

the episodes that followed were significant for their self-

conscious attempt to fold a queer ~ l l e n back into the flow
of everyday television and its domestic schedules on and
off the screen. McCarthy calls this “an impossible task: to
produce an episodic rather than a serial sense of queer life”
(597). Conventional sitcom situations on post-coming
out Ellen were harnessed in an ironic, self-conscious way.
It was this very doubleness-the everydayness, coupled
with an awareness of its absurdity-that signified a mo-
ment in queer TV that has not occurred before, or since.*

Ten years since the premiere of These Friend ofMine,
Ellen Degeneres has endured as queer TV’s last remaining
relic of the ’90s lesbian chic era. In 2000 she appeared in
an episode of the HBO special If These Walk Could Talk
2 with Sharon Stone (directed by Heche), playing a
lesbian in a relationship with a woman (Stone) who is
trying to get pregnant. 200112002 saw a failed sitcom
(The Ellen Show) in which she played a queer character
who returns to live in her home town. Real-life Degeneres
remained in the news as the noble, courageous spurned
lover of the mercurial Anne Heche

In 2003, The Ellen Degeneres Show premiered on NBC.
Its website uses the following adjectives to describe the
user-friendly nature of Degeneres and her show: “accessi-
ble,” “approachable,” “relatable,” “everywoman.” In it,
Degeneres once again speaks in a double voice, for the
show constantly comments on itself in a self-deprecating
manner by going behind the scenes, profiling production
assistants alongside Hollywood stars, and inviting audi-
ence members to dance in the aisles or give Ellen a
makeover. It’s a bit like the early days of Ellen, and the
destabilizing, running gag of her ineptitude. Thus, in a
kind of reality-show-meets-talk show hybrid approach,
Degeneres performs herself as an endearingly inept host,
with a supporting cast of enthusiastic audience, zany crew
members, Hollywood’s top celebrities, cutting-edge mu-
sical acts-and Tony Okungbowa, a Black British DJ.
Instead ofche usual band leader, it is Tony who appears on
every show as the standard talk show host foil. After a
short, usually autobiographicalstand-up routine (in which
her gayness is never mentioned), Ellen asks Tony to spin
a tune. Degeneres dances to the music for a minute or two,
later critiquing her dance moves in friendly banter with
Tony. This is, I would argue, the show’s defining (and
only) lesbian moment. As the music, usually hip hop, is
played, Ellen’s body is on display in a manner that is
decidedly not heteronormative. Here, Degeneres displays
the grace and confidence that her accessible, self-deprecat-
ing “kook act disavows. Degeneres looks like a butch
lesbian dancing alone, in a club. Dance, a celebration of
the body in performance, is, I would argue, analogous of
lesbian subtext. It is an implicitly sexual ritual behaviour
which enlarges public sexual space. It’s one of the reasons
lesbian cultures are still so centred around the bars. But
here, Degeneres dances, not with another woman, but
with Tony. In a shot-reverse-shot construction, shots of

Degeneres dancingalways cut away to ashot ofTony, who

is also dancing. More recently, the show has had Ellen
moving into the space of the audience while she dances,
but it is the Black DJ, and Black cultural space, defined by
music, that allows this liminal moment, halfway between
public and private, to occur,

As pleasurable as this moment is, it is deeply coded. It’s
almost like Degeneres, for the length of her talkshow, has
gone back into the closet, and some may argue, given the
straightness of explicitly gay shows like Will and Grace,
that that codedness produces better queer TV. Indeed, it
now seems extraordinary that Ellen’s televised and literal
ontological claim to lesbianism could have happened at
all. I would argue that the Ellen show’s particularly lesbian
interpellation occurred during a privileged moment, when
lesbians were not yet a target for corporate marketing.
Consider, for example, Degeneres’ recent foray into ad-
vertising, as a celebrity spokesperson for American Ex-
press. In a 60-second ad, Ellen is shown dancing: in her
home, and on the street. In voiceover, Ellen says, “My
life’s about dancing to my own tune. My American
Express card always backs me up.” The tagline reads, “My
life. My card.” Here, gay lifestyle and economic lifestyle
are completely interchangeable, as Degeneres’ seemingly
spontaneous dance moves become branded as part of
corporate expansion into the lesbian market.

In the end, neither Elen nor The Ellen Degeneres Show
are a satisfactory site for mimetic queerness. More impor-
tant are the obscured technologies of representation that
produce, contain, delimit, and unpack the normal. Judith
Butler has said, “I think that crafting a sexual position
always ends up becoming haunted by what’s excluded.
And the more rigid the position, the greater the ghost”
(qtd. in Osborne and Segal n.p.). E h n and The Ellen
Degeneres Show become more interesting, then, in their
liminality for the shadows and ghosts of race, class, and –
sexuality that produce an apparitional lesbian narrative
space on TV.

Marusya Bociurkiw is a media scholar, filmmaker and
writer. She recently received her P h D . In ~nterdisciplinaty
Studies, with afocus on cultural studies,Ji.om the University
of British Columbia, and currently teaches i n the Sexual
Diversities Studies Program at the University of Toronto. She
is a long-time lecturer and writer on issues of queer and
gendered representation in cinema and television. She is
currently working on a book about Canadian television,
affect, and nationalism.

‘African American writer Barbara Smith has written criti-
cally about lesbian chic: “No one would guess from recent
stories about wealthy and powerful white lesbians on TV
and in slick magazines that women earn 69 cents on the
dollar compared with men, and that Black women earn
even less” (8 1).
‘In 1990, the National Endowment for the Arts denied

180 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME

funding to four artists whose work was considered ob-
scene. Three identified as lesbian or gay. Linda Hart
argues that this decision was “explicitly concerned to
police displays of the body” (90). The censoring of the
“NFA Four” can be seen on a continuuim with the public
panic around the work of other artists like Robert
Mapplethorpe and Marlon Riggs. By the end of the ’90s
NFAfundingfor artists (as opposed to art institutions) has
virtually disappeared.
3Roland Boer has written about the transference between
media figures that occurred at Princess Diana’s funeral via
the presence of DonatellaVersace, Elton John, and others.
In a similar way, Degeneres has always maintained a
practice of being surrounded by pop cultural icons more
famous than her. They legitimate her queerness while she
provides them with a certain counter-cultural cachet.
4Showtimes’s The L Word, which premiered in 2004, does
similar work to Elhn, in terms ofdomestic lesbian-centred
drama that appears regularly in the weekly flow of the
television schedule. I would, however, argue that Ellen’s
detached irony, in part a result of its comedic structure,
produced a much more self-reflexive relation to televi-
sion’s heterosexual economy.

References

Boer, R. “Iconic Death and the Question ofcivil Religion.”
Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning.
Ed. Re:Public. Kingswood, N.S.W.: Research Centre
in Intercommunal Studies, University of Western
Sydney, 1997.

Dyer, R. White. London: Routledge, 1997.
“Ellen, Previously These Friends of Mine: An Episode

Guide.” Compiled by David Buff. Online: http://
epguides.com/Ellen/guide.shtml#epOO 1. Date accessed:
April 27 2004.

Freud, S. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.
Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1960.

Giese, R. “Gay Like Me.” The Globe and Mail, April 26
1997: C2.

Gilman, S. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward An
Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth
Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” Race, Writing
and Dzfference. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1987. 223-262.

Handy, B. “Roll Over Ward Cleaver.” Time Magazine
April 14, 1997: 44-50.

Hart, L. Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of
Aggression. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Healy, M. “Were We Being Served? Homosexual
Representation in Popular British Comedy.” Screen 36
(3) (Autumn 1995): 243-56.

Mayne, J. The Woman at the Kqhole: Feminism and
Women i Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990.

McCarthy, A. “Ellen: Making Television History.” GLQ:

A JournalofLesbian and Gay Studies 7 (4) (2001): 593-
620.

Munt, S. “Orifices in Space: Making the Real Possible.” in
ButchlFemme: Inside Lesbian Gender. Ed. Sally Munt.
London: Cassell, 1998. 1-12.

Neale, S. Genre. London: British Film Institute, 1980.
Osborne, P. and L. Segal. “Gender as Performance: An

Interview with Judith Butler.” Radical Philosophy 67
(Summer 1994). Online: http://www.theory.org.uk.
Date accessed: October 7, 1999.

Rowe, K. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of
Laughter. Austin: U. Texas Press, 1995.

Smith, B. The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race,
Gender, and Freedom. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1999.

Stallybrass, P. and A. White. The Politics and Poetics of
Transpsion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Neale, S. and F. Krutnik. Popular Film and Television
Comedy. London: Routledge, 1990.

Snead, J. White Screens, Black Images: Hollywoodjiom the
Dark Side. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Willis, S. High Contrast: Raceand Gender in Contemporary
Hollywood Films. Durham: Duke University Press,
1997.

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VOLUME 24, NUMBERS 2,3

1.  

Potter v. New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission, 2015 SCC 10

Suspension with pay may constitute “constructive dismissal”

Mr. Potter was the Executive Director of the New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission. While the parties were negotiating a buyout of Mr. Potter’s contract, Mr. Potter commenced a sick leave. In response, the employer wrote to Mr. Potter to advise him not to return to work until he was provided further direction. In the meanwhile, Mr. Potter was suspended with pay, and his powers were delegated to someone else. Mr. Potter sued for constructive dismissal.

The Supreme Court of Canada agreed with Mr. Potter, finding that Mr. Potter had been constructively dismissed, “[i]n light of the indefinite duration of the suspension, of the fact that the Commission failed to act in good faith insofar as it withheld valid business reasons from Mr. Potter, and of the Commission’s concealed intention to have Mr. Potter terminated.”

2.  Styles v. Alberta Investment Management Company, 2015 ABQB 621

Employers owe a duty of good faith when determining Long-Term Incentive Plan entitlements post-termination

After approximately three years of employment, Mr. Styles was terminated on a without cause basis. Pursuant to the terms of his employment agreement, Mr. Styles was paid three months of salary.

However, during the course of his employment, Mr. Styles became eligible to participate in (and did participate in) the Defendant’s Long Term Incentive Plan. Upon termination, Mr. Styles was advised that “[a]s per policy, no further payment on Annual Incentive Plan (AIP) or Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP) will be made).”

Despite the fact that the LTIP plan required Mr. Styles to be “actively employed” on the date that the monies were paid, Mr. Styles sued his former employer, citing, among other things, the fact that he had been dismissed shortly before the payout date.

Deciding in favour of Mr. Styles, the Court ordered an LTIP payout in the amount of $444,205 as a part of Mr. Styles’ severance on the basis that the employer’s strict reliance on the wording of the LTIP provision would violate the duty of good faith contractual performance that it owed to Mr. Styles (as recently established by the Supreme Court of Canada in its 2014 Bhasin v. Hrynew decision). In particular, the court held that “[w]hen an employment contract includes a condition for the receipt by an employee of a benefit under the contract and the employer has the discretion, pursuant to the terms of the contract, to frustrate the satisfaction of that condition, it becomes even more important for that discretion to be exercised fairly, reasonably and not arbitrarily.”

When is the exercise of “discretion” required to be reasonable?

3. O.P.T. v. Presteve Foods, 2015 HRTO 675

New high-water mark in general damages award for human rights violations

The Applicants, O.P.T. and M.P.T. were temporary foreign workers who had been employed by Presteve Foods for approximately nine months. Following their termination, the Applicants complained of several human rights violations by Presteve Foods, contrary to the Human Rights Code.

In its decision, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (the “HRTO”) determined that, during the course of their employment, the Applicants were subjected to “a persistent and ongoing pattern of sexual solicitations and advances” by the owner and principal of Presteve Foods, who “knew or ought reasonably to have known that these sexual solicitations and advances were unwelcome, particularly in light of the fact that O.P.T [and M.P.T.] expressly resisted and rejected his solicitations and advances on many occasions.”

Likewise, the HRTO concluded that “given that the personal respondent was the owner and principal of the corporate respondent at the time of the events at issue, there is no question that he was part of the directing mind of the corporate respondent. Accordingly, […] the corporate respondent is also liable for all violations of [the Human Rights Code that the HRTO has] found as against the personal respondent.”

On account of the severity of the contraventions of the Human Rights Code, the HRTO awarded O.P.T. and M.P.T. damages for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect in the aggregate amount of $200,000.

4. Commission de la santé et de la sécurité au travail v. Caron, 2015 QCCA 1048

Scope of duty to accommodate expanded for Quebec employers

In the course of his employment, Mr. Caron developed tennis elbow, which required surgery. Following the injury, Mr. Caron was assigned to a temporary position.

A few years later, Mr. Caron’s temporary position was abolished. His employer indicated that it could not offer another suitable or available position. Ultimately, Mr. Caron’s employment was terminated.

On behalf of Mr. Caron, the union commenced a claim, alleging that the employer had failed to comply with Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms (the “Charter”). In particular, the union argued that Mr. Caron’s injury amounted to a handicap and that the employer had failed to accommodate Mr. Caron to the point of undue hardship, despite the fact that such accommodation was not required by Quebec’s Act Respecting Industrial Accidents and Occupational Diseases (the “Act”). The administrative tribunal disagreed with the union.

However, the administrative tribunal’s decision was subsequently overturned by both the Superior Court of Quebec and the Quebec Court of Appeal. The argument that the Act constitutes its own autonomous process of accommodation was dismissed by both courts. Ultimately, the Court of Appeal held that the quasi-constitutional right to accommodation in the workplace prescribed by the Charter constitutes a preeminent standard that transcends the law, employment contracts, and collective agreements.

On June 15, 2015, in Commission de la santé et de la sécurité au travail v. Alain Caron et al. 2015 QCCA 1048, the Quebec Court of Appeal rendered an important decision that changes the threshold employers must meet when accommodating workplace injuries.

The court confirmed that an employer has a duty to accommodate an employee who has suffered an employment injury resulting in a handicap, even where such an obligation is not required of the employer by virtue of the Act Respecting Industrial Accidents and Occupational Diseases (the “Act”). 

The Commission des lésions professionnelles (“CLP”) rejected the union’s arguments. The union then appealed that decision via a motion for judicial review by the Superior Court of Quebec.

5. Evans v. Avalon Ford Sales (1996) Limited, 2015 NLSCTD 100

Duty of good faith may require employers to provide employees with “cooling-off period” to reconsider resignation: failing to do so may constitute constructive dismissal

After being reprimanded by his employer, Mr. Evans had an acute stress reaction. Ultimately, Mr. Evans advised the employer “I’m done”, and placed his cell phone and keys on his supervisor’s desk.

The next day, Mr. Evans attempted to contact his supervisor, but was unable to speak with the supervisor directly. In any event, the supervisor had concluded that Mr. Evans had resigned from his position.

For the following three weeks, Mr. Evans sought medical treatment. Thereafter, Mr. Evans provided his supervisor with a letter explaining why he had left and indicating that his departure had been involuntary.

In this case, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador found that “the implied term of good faith and fair dealings which applied to both parties and to the employment contract required the employer to give Mr. Evans time to cool off and reconsider”, and that the employer’s “failure to do so represents a breach of the implied major term of good faith and fair dealings”, “regardless of whether [Mr. Evans] involuntarily resigned […] or voluntarily resigned but in circumstances of confusion or uncertainty.”

On account of the employer’s breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealings, the court held that the employer had breached a fundamental term of the employment contract, and therefore constructively dismissed Mr. Evans. For that reason, Mr. Evans was awarded damages for pay in lieu of notice in the amount of $46,201.87.

6. Michela v. St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic School, 2015 ONCA 801

Employer’s financial circumstances not relevant in determining employee’s notice entitlements upon termination

Following Ms. Michela’s termination, she (and others) commenced a wrongful-dismissal action against her employer, a private school, seeking pay in lieu of reasonable notice of termination.

On a motion for summary judgment, the employer argued that that its financial circumstances were relevant in determining Ms. Michela’s termination entitlements. For that reason, the motion judge found that Ms. Michela’s reasonable notice period was 12 months but reduced her claim for notice by half, to six months.

However, Ms. Michela successfully appealed the decision of the motion judge to the Ontario Court of Appeal. In its decision, the Court of Appeal held that “the motion judge erred in considering an employer’s financial circumstances as part of the “character of the employment.” The court went on to observe that “[a]n employer’s financial circumstances may well be the reason for terminating a contract of employment – the event that gives rise to the employee’s right to reasonable notice. But an employer’s financial circumstances are not relevant to the determination of reasonable notice in a particular case: they justify neither a reduction in the notice period in bad times nor an increase when times are good.”

Therefore, the court awarded Ms. Michela twelve months of reasonable notice together with her costs in the amount of $68,573.42.

7. R v Kazenelson, 2015 ONSC 3639

Supervisors can be criminally charged for criminal negligence causing death and bodily harm

Mr. Kazenelson was a project manager for a construction company in Toronto, Metron Construction Incorporated (“Metron”).

Six workers employed by Metron under Mr. Kazenelson’s supervision were working on a swing stage when it suddenly collapsed. Only one of the six workers was attached to a lifeline as required by both the law and industry practice. Unfortunately, the other five workers fell more than 100 feet to the ground. Four of them died, and the fifth sustained serious injuries.

Although Mr. Kazenelson was aware that there were only two lifelines available for the six workers and that only one lifeline was in use, Mr. Kazenelson took no steps to ensure that lifelines were available for all the workers and that the workers were using lifelines.

Following the incident, Mr. Kazenelson was charged with four counts of criminal negligence causing death and one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm under section 217.1 of the Criminal Code. In 2015, Mr. Kazenelson was convicted on those four counts.

Since that conviction, Mr. Kazenelson has been sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment.

8. Baroch v. Canada Cartage Diversified GP Inc., 2015 ONSC 40

Overtime class action certification

Mr. Baroch was an employee that worked as a shunter for Canada Cartage Diversified GP Inc. (“Canada Cartage”). Mr. Baroch brought an action against Canada Cartage alleging that, as a matter of policy or practice, Canada Cartage did not follow the statutory requirements for overtime in Ontario. Mr. Baroch sought to certify his action as a class action.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified Mr. Baroch’s action as a class action against Canada Cartage on behalf of all the employees of Canada Cartage. Mr. Baroch was able to satisfy the court that the requirement of commonality under the Ontario Class Proceedings Act had been met by framing his action around the systemic policies or practices of Canada Cartage rather than on the individual entitlements of any one member of the proposed class.

Ultimately, the common issues regarding the employment agreements, the employer’s policy, good faith and honesty, negligence, unjust enrichment, aggregate damages, and punitive damages were all certified as a part of the class action. The proposed common issues regarding breach of the employment agreements and remedies were not certified.

The Ontario Divisional Court has refused to grant Canada Cartage leave to appeal the decision.

9. Silvera v. Olympia Jewellery Corp., 2015 ONSC 3760

Human rights damages award for sexual assault

Ms. Silvera was an administrative employee of Olympia Jewelry Corp. (“Olympia”). Over the course of her employment, Ms. Silvera was subjected to three separate serious instances of sexual assault by her boss, Mr. Morris Bazik, and ongoing sexual harassment. Mr. Bazik touched Ms. Silvera’s breasts on several occasions, touched her buttocks, insisted she wear jewelry so he could touch her, and gave her massages. Mr. Bazik would require Ms. Silvera to stay late at work after other employees had left for the day (which was unpaid time) and used the time alone to assault Ms. Silvera and harass her with questions and comments about her personal life. Ms. Silvera began to suffer significant emotional damage as a result of this ongoing sexual harassment.

Ms. Silvera was terminated from Olympia as a result of a leave she was required to take for a dental emergency and unfounded allegations of misconduct. Ms. Silvera brought an action for damages for sexual assault, battery and harassment against Olympia and Mr. Bazik personally following her termination. Neither Olympia nor Mr. Bazik participated in the trial and, consequently, their defence was struck and all of the factual allegations pleaded in Ms. Silvera’s claim were therefore deemed to be admitted by Olympia and Mr. Bazik.

Ultimately, the Ontario Superior Court awarded damages of nearly $300,000 to Ms. Silvera for sexual assault, battery, wrongful termination, and violation of her rights under the Human Rights Code. Among other things, the damages were intended to compensate Ms. Silvera for costs of future therapy care and future loss of income. The court also awarded damages of $15,000 to Ms. Silvera’s daughter pursuant to the Ontario Family Law Act for loss of guidance, care and companionship.

10. 

Keenan v. Canac Kitchens Ltd., 2015 ONSC 1055

Dependent contractors are entitled to termination pay

Marilyn and Lawrence Keenan (the “Keenans”) are a husband and wife team who carried on business under the name Keenan Cabinetry. The Keenans worked for Canac Kitchens Ltd. (“Canac”) for 32 and 25 years respectively, as foremen and supervisors of installers.

The Keenans were initially employees of Canac but, in 1987, Canac advised them that they would cease to be employees and would become independent contractors. The Keenans continued working for Canac until 2007 when they were both terminated without notice as a result of a slowdown in work. While working for Canac from 1987 to 2007, purportedly as independent contractors, the Keenans enjoyed employee discounts, wore shirts with Canac logos, had Canac business cards, and were given gifts from Canac for long service. Canac customers and installers believed the Keenans were Canac representatives.

Following their terminations, the Keenans brought an action for wrongful dismissal seeking pay in lieu of notice of their termination.

In response, Canac argued that the Keenans were not entitled to notice of termination because they were independent contractors.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice concluded that the Keenans were “dependent contractors” rather than independent contractors and, therefore, were entitled to reasonable notice of their termination.

On account of the Keenans’ total length of service to Canac, the court awarded each of them 26 months’ pay in lieu of notice of their termination.

This decision has recently been upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Holloway

Your name here

October 22, 20

1

5

Canada’s Need to Take Ownersh*t of its Role in Space Exploration

A short paper on international space law

Introduction/Issues

A frozen turd ball was ejected from our orbiting space station and struck a foreign state’s spy satellite. The satellite was knocked out of orbit and crashed to Earth. The foreign state now demands reparations from us. This paper will survey the legal regime for the use of space and states’ obligations with respect to debris causing damage to other objects in space. Then, this paper will analyze the current situation to assess our options for response. This paper concludes that we should pay reparations to the foreign state and develop technologies to reduce our production of dangerous debris in space.

Rules

Given that humanity gained access to space relatively recently, and only a limited number of states actually participate in space exploration, international space law is still in its infancy. Although states have jurisdiction over the airspace immediately above their territory, outer space is understood as a ‘res communis’, meaning that none of it can form part of a state’s sovereign territory.[footnoteRef:1] The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies entered into force in 1967 and forms the basis of international space law.[footnoteRef:2] 103 states, including Canada, have ratified the treaty and another 25 states are signatories.[footnoteRef:3] Article III notes the parties’ desires to promote peace, security, cooperation and understanding with regards to the use and development of space. Article VIII specifies that states maintain jurisdiction over whatever objects or personnel they send into space. [1: Currie, John H. et al, International Law: Doctrine, Practice and Theory, 2nd ed (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2014) at 466. ] [2: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, 27 January 1967, 610 UNTS 205 (entered into force 10 October 1967) [Outer Space Treaty].] [3: Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Status and application of the five United Nations treaties on outer space, UNGAOR, 54th Sess, Supp No 5, UN Doc A/AC.105/C.2/2015/CRP.8, (2015) at 10 [United Nations treaties on outer space].]

While various other treaties exist to deal with particular aspects of international space law, this paper’s focus is states’ obligations with regards to debris causing damage to other objects in space. To clarify and expand this area of international space law, the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects entered into force in 1972.[footnoteRef:4] Currently, 92 states, including Canada, have ratified the treaty and another 21 states are signatories.[footnoteRef:5] The treaty allows for states to bring claims against other states to recover damages in the event that a state’s property from outer space causes damage to another state’s property – in outer space or on Earth. In 1978, Canada filed a claim against the USSR under this treaty after a Soviet satellite was damaged upon re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere and radioactive debris was scattered across parts of northern Canada. The USSR paid Canada $3,000,000 as compensation.[footnoteRef:6] [4: Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, 29 March 1972, 961 UNTS 188 (entered into force 1 September 1972) [Space Liability Convention].] [5: United Nations treaties on outer space, supra note 3.] [6: Currie, supra note 1 at 470.]

The Report of the Third United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space from 1999 laid out an action plan developed by the UN to facilitate the creation of an international space regime.[footnoteRef:7] Though no such regime has been established yet, the document is a reflection of the international community’s intentions and attitudes towards space. The plan focuses on establishing coordinated efforts and strategies, promoting safety measures and procedures, and recognizing the ways present-day uses of space will affect the international community and future generations. [7: The Space Millennium: Vienna Declaration on Space and Human Development, Report of the Third United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, UN Doc A/CONF.184/6 (18 October 1999) at 6-19 [Vienna Declaration on Space].]

As human activity in space has increased and our understanding of the dangers posed by accumulating space debris has deepened, various states have endorsed guidelines to minimize the problem. In 2008, the UN adopted the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, as set out in Report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.[footnoteRef:8] These guidelines encourage states to minimize their production of debris and to minimize the effects of debris on the space environment. As guidelines, they are not binding on states, but they are nevertheless to be taken seriously. It is also worth noting that many states have adopted similar guidelines domestically.[footnoteRef:9] [8: Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, Report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, UNGAOR, 62nd Sess, Supp No 20, UN Doc A/62/20 (2007) at 48 [Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines].] [9: Currie, supra note 1 at 474.]

Analysis

The Outer Space Treaty makes clear that states maintain jurisdiction over whatever objects or personnel they send into space. From this, it follows that states also maintain jurisdiction over whatever objects may separate or emanate from whatever they send into space. Essentially, states should be understood to maintain jurisdiction over whatever objects they are responsible for sending to, or making in, space. It is clear that Canada has jurisdiction over its orbiting space station and the personnel aboard the station. And indeed, Canada also has jurisdiction over the frozen turd balls that were produced aboard and ejected from the station.

The Space Liability Convention makes clear that states are liable for any injury they cause to other states as a by-product of their activities in space. Under this treaty, the foreign state can bring a claim against Canada to seek reparations for the damage done to its spy satellite. Especially since Canada has itself filed a claim and received compensation from the USSR under this treaty, it would be deeply hypocritical of us to resist the foreign state’s claim. To do so would not bode well for Canada’s reputation as a state which acts in good faith and honours its obligations under international law.

Even if the foreign state is not a party to the Space Liability Convention and thus cannot use this channel of recourse, it is still going to be in a strong position to make a claim against Canada. Firstly, the preponderance of international space law speaks to the importance of collaboration, sharing, and good faith in the use of space. Though states have yet to reach consensus about whether space development should aim to establish a common heritage for humankind or should allow for the commodification of space resources by particular states,[footnoteRef:10] it seems that a minimum level of cooperation and consideration for the safety and interests of others is unambiguously expected. The foreign state is well-positioned to argue that Canada’s practice of ejecting 10 kg frozen turd balls into space is reckless; that this poses unnecessary risks; that Canada should be held liable for the damages it has caused as a result of engaging in this practice. [10: Ibid at 469.]

Conclusions

Canada has jurisdiction over the ejected turd balls and is liable under the Space Liability Convention. It seems highly unlikely that Canada can avoid paying compensation to the foreign state whose spy satellite we damaged. Moreover, this practice runs contrary to the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines. As such, Canada should endeavor to find alternate means of dealing with waste produced space aboard the space station.

1