Pete Cross

If Elon was the Commissioner

Posted on October 31, 2023 by Pete Cross

During a few minutes of contemplation, while staring at those fluffy clouds in the blue sky above, my mind wanders to the topic of how the RCMP can pull out of this current management death spiral. You must understand that I have come to truly believe that if there is not significant and fundamental change in this once proud organization, that it may be doomed to become a shadow of what they once were, a poor cousin to other policing agencies. Now, before we go further, for those that will criticize wasting ones time with pondering the future, Professor Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan believes that allowing your mind to wander is “valuable”– as it “helps us simulate and plan for the future and learn from out past, and it facilitates creative problem-solving”. So with the Professor’s blessing I recently had this thought.

What if Elon Musk was made the next Commissioner of the RCMP?

This thought admittedly was in turn prompted by having just finished the excellent biography by Walter Isaakson entitled, fittingly, “Elon Musk”. I also am just finishing Michael Lewis‘ book, “Going Infinite” which details the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried. Both of these book subjects are clearly of genius level IQ’s, and come from the world of math and engineering. Bank-man Fried is a riddle and problem solver and relates everything to a math and the ability to solve anything by the use of numbers. He of course is likely going to jail, so I thought he may not the best candidate for the job of RCMP Commissioner. Elon is also a genius in the engineering and production fields, but he may end up living on Mars. However, he is probably the best candidate for the job of Commissioner, even if he is to be only semi-available and would need to “work-share”. One would also have to allow for a 30 minute delay in voice transmissions. But, let’s put that aside.

Many of you will recoil at the thought of Elon in red serge, and let’s be clear, Elon Musk is admittedly a human relations nightmare. So I understand that if you are someone who favours the current climate of employees allowed to dictate to management, working from home, or having designated psychological safe spots inside the office (as was in the Twitter offices) you should stop reading now. Elon is not your man. This will include most people of a liberal progressive nature, who spend inordinate amounts of time talking of diversity and inclusion. I get it, you will openly despise Elon Musk, so it would also be safe to assume that those currently at the higher echelons of the RCMP, would not be in his camp and will not be the first to nominate Elon for Commissioner. It would sort of be a Bill Elliott situation.

This lack of support for Elon by the extreme woke is interesting, because Musk has stated his major agenda items clearly, and all come from the progressive side of the fence. They are to reduce the carbon footprint– and he created Tesla which makes more electric cars than all the other companies combined; to make possible inter-planetary travel and the need for scientific advancements in space, and then he created Space X, which has now replaced NASA as the provider of space travel; and he is concerned about unrestricted development of artificial intelligence; and has developed OpenAI, and then Neuralink. There should be no argument that his momentous accomplishments from building rockets to robots, will not in my opinion be duplicated in my or your lifetime.

How did he do it, how is it possible for a person who grew up in South Africa, bullied, abused physically and mentally, how is it possible he has had these accomplishments, while albeit at the same time becoming such a polarizing figure? It wasn’t easy, it was mind bending hard work, but he did have some basic formulas to his success. So my wandering mind wants to know– can we apply his formulas to the current policing Mountie dilemma?

Part of the “magic” of Elon is his ability to drill down, to determine and decide on the goal of the agency or company. So imagine if you will, that as he sits in the Commissioner’s boardroom surrounded by the multiple levels of top brass– the first question he would ask is what is the role of the RCMP in Canada? Not the secondary goals, but the primary goal. No one by the way, should dare answer “to keep Canadians and their interests safe and secure” because you would be un-ceremoniously escorted from the room.

He would with little doubt marvel at the massive all inclusive mandate, whether it be members on the musical ride, members involved in peace keeping, or cybercrime, rural policing and Federal policing. He would also be astounded that the officers doing public relations could be placed in or be promoted to a staffing or to drug position, with little or no expertise in any of the areas. He is big on getting the very best experts.

Getting back to the central question though, my best guess would be that he would determine that the central role of the RCMP is to “investigate”. Once that was agreed, he would then drill down further. He would say that if you are not tied to an investigation, or have participated in an investigation, or are running an investigation, then you are not in fact needed. And he would make each and everyone prove and point to an investigation that they were involved in, explain their role, and what that role entailed in terms of expertise and experience. If you could not, you would also be released.

He would explore each and every layer of an investigation and the procedures to determine who made a single decision in the course of the investigation, and then determine what was the result of those decisions. One would need to justify your method, your process, and your results. You could equally be assured if the results weren’t positive, you too would likely be expendable.

Needless to say the administrative and operational pyramid would be completely flattened. If you were supervising another supervisor, or just one of the many layers of authority up and down the organization– you also would be gone. Musk practised what he preached in all of these businesses and would often make massive cuts to personnel. Those that were not central to the mandate would be terminated, which in this puffed up 21st century meant that you would have to fire a lot of people. Later on, he reasoned if you didn’t need to hire back 25% of those that you fired, than the original cuts clearly had not been deep enough. It was ruthless and unfeeling. He cut down 1500 software engineers at Twitter to 150– if you hadn’t recently written any code you were gone. (Just as an aside, Twitter or X is still running despite all the dire predictions.)

Elon has no emotional sensors and no ability to show empathy or read body language. He is an uncaring, results oriented, and highly driven individual– but always leading by example, sleeping on assembly line floors at Tesla, and outworking everyone in his path. He had an intimate engineering knowledge of each process, and of each layer of that process. By speaking to the ones on the ground floor, the ones who actually built the car or the rocket ship, he was able to cut costs, and drastically cut timelines, and would in almost every instance reach a mission accomplished moment. He would take on complete personal and financial risk, while at the same time be oblivious to criticism– some of which was warranted, and some which was not.

So how many in the RCMP would survive this onslaught of accountability? Not many at 73 Leikin Drive would be a first guess. Commissioner Duheme who recently toured some Mountie detachments and received plaudits for reaching out to the working folk, is clearly still of the Ottawa/Lucki/Liberal mindset. He illustrated this when he recently put out the “Big Five” goals for modernizing the RCMP: 1 )Ensure a safe and equitable workplace 2) Address systemic racism 3) Advance reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples 4) Support Modern Policing and 5) Improve accountability, transparency and conduct.

I think I can say with some certainty that Mr. Musk would deep six all but number four. All members involved in or working on the other four unmeasurable “goals”, would be removed or sent to an investigative field. There would be no more musical ride for instance, there would be no more strategic media relations groups, there would be no more school liaison, or community policing groups. There would be no more VIP security, replaced by half price security guards or by technology. All administrative officers would be re-assigned, such as those in Staffing and Training sections and if they were in fact needed for the day to day running of the operation, they too would be replaced by cheaper civilian staff.

Command Centres would be no more. If you were leading or supervising, you would be in the cars, on the ground, leading by example, not by gold, silver or bronze command oversight. Of course there would still be supervisors, but if the supervisor’s team failed, the supervisor failed, and would be replaced, not the other way around. One could also believe that there would be no more RCMP shortages of manpower to worry about– as the Mounties living in Nepean were sent to Buffalo Narrows or Flin Flon Manitoba, asked to now find those uniform pants and be prepared for night shifts. Same pay, but a different job.

There would also be financial accountability. Elon famously reduced a $1.5 million air conditioning system on a space module to $150,000 with nothing lost in effectiveness simply by drilling down on the costs to produce. He would question such things as the recent VIP security bill for the PM which rose to $30.9 million in 2021 from $23.3 million in 2019/2020, a 32% increase. The overall budget for the RCMP is currently about $7 billion, Elon would want an accounting of all those dollars being spent, including where the $4 billion for contract policing is being spent on a dollar for dollar basis.

But alas, one’s mind can only wander for short periods of time as something inevitably jolts you back to reality. You and I know there will be no campaign for Elon as Commissioner. Nobody gets fired in the Mounties, nobody is held to account, nobody is required to justify their decision making, and all are protected by a shroud of rules around privacy and the everybody as a victim cloak; that is the society we now inhabit. There would be many that would thrive in an Elon environment, happy to be finally be recognized for the job that they are doing, and to see those that were taking advantage of the “system” removed. But an un-comprehending general malaise would also befall many. The lawsuits and grievances would in and of themselves probably sink the ship.

That being said, it is fun to think of the possibilities, don’t you think, to let your mind wander to another world, where responsibility and accountability replace diversity, inclusion, and proper pronouns. It’s very cathartic, to just for a short time exorcise those woke demons.

Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

An Open Invitation

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Pete Cross

This blog issue is somewhat out of the norm–it is more of a request and an invitation. For quite some time I have been toying with the idea of reaching out to the readers of this blog for your assistance.

I have been thinking about this idea for quite some time, an idea which has grown from a couple of observations. Firstly, the numbers of readers of this blog has grown over the past number of years. Currently the blog is being read in all parts of Canada and there has even been a reader or two from overseas. On a strictly personal level, it has enabled me to connect with the past, officers who I worked with over the years, or people that I have met through these last few decades either by circumstance or situation. In all these meetings or conversations I almost always learn something new, or hear a story I have never heard before. The stories range in scope, much like the types of people who are telling them; some are comical, some are dramatic, and some are heart wrenching and tragic.

Secondly, I have also come to realize that there are a lot of individuals out there who have a way with words. They have literary talents in my humble opinion. So then the question became for me can we harness these talents, and is this blog a possible forum for those that would be inclined to share, and just as importantly are willing to put the thankless time and effort into writing?

Are there issues that need to be covered, are there stories which bear some further investigation and examination? Of course. This is a broad world and the theoretical and practical elements of policing touch on all facets of our society. Clearly, there are many subject areas which I know nothing about. I also find myself continually asking myself whether my ideas and thoughts have been made redundant by time. The basic principles of policing remain the same, but the experiences and perspectives are clearly changing.

So I am asking if anyone out there wants to send in their thoughts and writings to me to have them posted here?

The blog would thus take on a more open magazine format. I am imagining a like a “New Yorker”, not so much the “Blue Line”. The latter magazine clearly serves a purpose and they do a commendable job, but it is an industry magazine for policing. The publisher also publishes a magazine for firefighters, and cannabis producers. There are articles by police managers, articles on “note taking” and the “history of handcuffs” (in the latest edition) set amongst a lot of advertising for body armour or flashlights. The editors of the magazine have a background in publishing industrial magazines, not policing, and I think that makes a difference in what makes it into the pages.

I see this blog and this proposal as more of a call for an open literary forum, a town hall soap box if you will, covering a wider range of topics, more philosophical, more academic than opinion. I am curious and would like to hear from all the voices on the other side –those that tend to remain silent amongst the chaos around them. I would encourage all those voices to come forward; spouses of officers, civilians, members of the public, the trainers, the staffing officers, the executive ranks, and those in uniform working the shifts and guzzling the Tim Horton’s coffee. I would also like to hear from those that like to find things out, they like to investigate, research the topic, and then present their evidence. The policing world is by circumstance and by choice an opaque world, one where shining a light into the corners of the room is frowned upon, often discouraged, and sometimes punished. That needs to change.

Obviously, there have to be some rules to the game and what I am proposing.

a) First and foremost I will need to maintain editorial oversight, the blog is in my name, and therefore forms my reputation.

b) The written work should be no longer than 1500 words, and can be sent on Pages or Word documents.

c) You will need to identify who you are but you can ask for it to be printed anonymously, but I personally will need to know who is writing. I would correspond and advise anyone whose blog I would like to post ahead of time. All submissions would be stored and maintained in a separate and secure location.

d) The subject material should not be just a personal grievance, or a personal complaint, it should have a broader audience. Nor obviously can it be racist or derogatory, slanderous or a mere rant, as neither serves any purpose and is usually in the end quite boring. It does not have to be a positive comment, but any negative, or positive comment for that matter, should be presented with the evidence. It can be irreverent but not crass.

It can either be fiction or non-fiction.

The idea is to develop, present, and to orchestrate a dialogue. Ideally it will be different than what you have seen or read in the past, it will hopefully present new ideas, or open up fresh points of view, and hopefully also entertaining.

So let me know your thoughts. Do you think there is room for something outside the normal journalistic media or industrial magazine, something that is a more considered dive into the issues of the day? I will await your comments, and hopefully your submissions.

All submissions can be sent to: pjn2243@gmail.com

Photo courtesy of Cathy Stanley-Erickson via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

No longer Dancing with India

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Pete Cross

Can anyone forget our Prime Minister dancing on to the stage at a diplomatic function in India, dressed in full Indian garb, apparently trying to demonstrate both his ability to cut the rug with the locals, while at the same time demonstrating his love for the Indian people and his obvious personal love of the spotlight. Flash forward to the present day, to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India now kicking our Prime Minister hard and squarely in his back end with his pointed juttis. Trudeau was snubbed so like the petulant child he skipped the formal dinner, pouting, and just wanted to get away, only to be stymied by a grounded airplane with a single missing part. He was personally embarrassed and he embarrassed our country.

A short time later, back in the safe confines of Canada, Trudeau decides to publicly out and allege that India was complicit in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijar. Nijar was gunned down outside the Guru Nanak Gurdwara Sikh temple on a mild June evening this past summer in Surrey, British Columbia- shot in his vehicle as he was leaving the area. It was an outrageous allegation, that in and of itself demanded evidence. Trudeau stated, and we must pay attention to the words, that there were “credible allegations” that “agents of the Indian government were involved”. The press began to move in and question, so the government elaborated to a minor degree by way of explanation that they had “shared intelligence among the Five Eyes Partners that helped lead Canada to making these statements.” The pressure for answers began to grow, the government went a little further and said that the information came from “an unspecified member of the intelligence sharing alliance”.

The two masked and unidentified suspect gunmen fled, and were only captured on video, leaving in a grey small sedan. No charges have been forwarded to date although it is still somewhat early in the investigation.

This is not an easy case, because Nijar was not just a plumber, as was his listed occupation. Mr. Nijar has a complicated history, in fact a long history of interactions and clashes with both the government of India who were chasing him as a labelled “terrorist”, and then with the Canadian government as he fled India and took up residency in Canada.

Some deeper historical background is necessary. The Sikhs make up about 2% of the Indian population, and are in fact a religious minority in their home country. In the 1980’s there was an orchestrated Sikh movement in the state of Punjab, to form a separate state of Khalistan. They pushed their agenda with acts of repeated violence and numerous attacks on government agencies. It was ongoing until the armed forces of India eventually made a concentrated effort against the group; running several military style operations which effectively helped to dismantle the group or at the least drive it underground. The central government of India to this very day has strongly opposed the Khalistan movement, as have all the mainstream parties, including those in the Punjab; and all have continued to denounce the violence and the move to separatism.

Canada became a favourite country for the Sikhs and now is the largest Sikh diaspora outside of the Punjab. The cries for a separate state of Khlistan simply moved or were imported to the ever welcoming Canadian mosaic. Over the last number of years, both sides of the Khalistan argument have frequently taken to the streets in Canada in variously sized protests, with the people siding with the separatists posting signs such as “Kill India” and labelling Indian diplomats as “Killers”. Canada’s short history in terms of the Sikh’s is replete with extremism; do we need to remind people of June 1982 when Air India flight 182, was bombed out of the sky killing 329 people– and the fingers of that investigation pointed directly to Sikh extremists inside the borders of British Columbia. So when we consider that one man’s terrorist is the next man’s freedom fighter, it is not difficult to imagine Mr. Nijar as possibly not being a completely innocent victim in all of this. It is equally important to note that the Sikhs in Surrey and in Vancouver British Columbia, are a prominent and active vocal political group–and massive supporters of the Federal Liberals and the Liberal and NDP Provincial governments.

In 1998, Mr. Nijar had arrived at Pearson airport in Toronto, under the name “Ravi Sharma”, and applied for Canadian citizenship and in doing so told a long sordid story of torture and threats to his life, his brother and his father. He was turned down as the Immigration authorities simply did not believe his story. Eleven days later he applied for Canadian citizenship, as he now claimed to be married to a B.C. woman. She had been also sponsored to Canada, but by a different husband. So again, Mr. Nijar was denied Canadian citizenship and he appealed. In 2001 that appeal was denied. However, in the ensuing years and at the time of his death, Mr. Nijar identified himself as a Canadian citizen and was married with two children, and supporting himself as a plumber in Surrey British Columbia. He remained politically active and in 2018 he was elected President of the Guru Nanak temple, which is a Federally registered charity, and has over the years had some questions raised in terms of their financing. In 2019 Nijar would be charged criminally with assault, but the charges were later dropped.

Meanwhile over this span of years, the Indian authorities had issued a warrant through Interpol for Nijar’s arrest in 2014 and alleged, that he was the “mastermind/active member of the Khalistan Tiger Force”–a terrorist group. He was implicated in the bombing of a cinema in 2007 as part of their evidence. India’s National Investigation Agency announced a reward for his arrest in the amount of the equivalent of $16,000 Cdn.

So this raises a couple of serious questions. Why was Nijar never arrested under the warrant, although he was clearly in plain and public view? Canada has an extradition treaty with India, so that is not the excuse. The Indian government has in fact been complaining for years of Canada being a refuge for Sikh extremists; despite this, no effort appears to have been made to arrest Nijar. Was Nijar in fact a Canadian citizen? If he wasn’t, that too would have made him libel for extradition proceedings under the Immigration Act.

One must be clear though that nothing allows or would allow a government sanctioned killing in Canada; regardless of the long-standing political and economic ties to India. As the American ambassador said of course, if those allegations “prove to be true”. Or as Melanie Joly said that the Indian government “may have been involved”.

But we need to look at Trudeau’s decision to out the “ties” to the Indian government in terms of Nijar’s murder. As a former member of the CSIS precursor, Security Service, and as a former homicide investigator, at no level, and under no set of circumstances, could this Trudeau move ever be sanctioned. It was irresponsible and will have secondary economic ramifications in the billions of dollars. Politically now India has expelled a number of Canadian diplomats and the relations between the two countries is at its lowest. It would seem that the only motivation behind the pronouncement by Trudeau was to swivel the klieg lights onto our brilliant freedom fighting Prime Minister and away from the negative tone of his trip.

From a homicide viewpoint, how could this have helped? If your true goal is to bring some justice to this matter, and capture the persons responsible how was this supposed to play out? Do you think that by advising the possible suspects that the Canadian government may be on to them would do anything other than alert them to either run or be more cautious, or if the Indian government was involved, to destroy any linking evidence.

From a CSIS perspective, it is always considered a final step in any diplomatic kerfuffle, whether it be a diplomatic spying case, or a case such as this, linked to some criminal behaviour, that you expel any persons. You never tip your hand, until you can do nothing else. That is just the nature of this murkish spy and political investigation world. To kick a diplomat out of the country was always considered an admission of desperation on the part of the investigative group, simply a last ditch effort to demonstrate your effectiveness, to send a message. And almost always, one had to anticipate that the offended country would then do the same, tit for tat, expel a Canadian diplomat in retaliation, with nothing ever really accomplished by it. Furthermore, if there was some diplomat of India involved in the case that was captured by human or signal intelligence, it is better to leave them in place, to know and control the identity of the devil, rather than expel him or her and start over again.

So as far as can be determined, Trudeau has one possible out. Reveal your evidence. Lay criminal charges– as did Britain in the Sergei Skirpal case in 2018, when Skirpal and his daughter had been poisoned by the Russians. Charges were layed, and people were expelled, and the offending country was called out with the presented evidence. If you can not do that, then this could only be labelled as blatant and disarming level of incompetence which may have interfered with a criminal investigation.

We as Canadians need to understand that if you going to open the doors to the immigrants of the world, they will come with their customs, their religions, and their beliefs. We have offered safe harbour to many groups that are escaping the violence and corruption of their homelands, but it has always been well known that planted among them will be the extremists. The Canadian government seems to have naively looked the other way. Meanwhile one can only assume that the Five Eyes community are not looking the other way, but are now rolling their eyes heavenward.

Photo courtesy of Jorge Lascar via Flickr Commons — Some Rights Reserved

Fall Reflections…

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Pete Cross

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves” – Virginia Woolf

Writers and poets have spent many words in trying to capture the essence of the coming of Autumn. As nature changes to reflect the shortening of sunlight and what Keats called “the season of mist and and mellow fruitfulness”, for me it is a time to pause, a lull in time when we all re-adjust and prepare for a return to the comfortable routines. It is a favourite time for many, these days of changing colours, when the sky seems bluer, the clearer air markedly cooler. In nature, it is also a time of decay, a coming to the natural end of life. So it seems as good as time as any to reflect on the good and the not so good which have come out of these last few months. They are subjective, in no particular order, and of no particular importance.

One of my over-riding thoughts is about our news, the constant stream, less and less from traditional media, as the digression to a reliance on social media seems to be accelerating at an alarming rate. Thus, the reliability of that watered down news should be of the utmost concern. This is not new, this trend has been going for several years and it is indeed worrisome, especially for anyone who historically has valued the role of the 5th Estate. The news now is in snippets, pieces of video, pieces of conversation, mixed in with fully partisan and fragmented opinions. Press releases are being issued, and then regurgitated through the media in tiny sound bites to a public, which has clearly become disenchanted, and that disinterest is palatable. Every story is purposely planned to begin with “unprecedented”, “historic” and “never seen before”. It is like television and radio have been swallowed up by the National Enquirer. This summer as we took in the sunshine and communed with nature, our phones were constantly being pinged and alerted; bombarded by the news of “soaring inflation”, “unprecedented wildfires”, and the “historic cost of housing”. Youtube video and Instagram posts are now spliced into to be part of the actual coverage, and often polarized opinion is dangerously assumed to be fact. This trend is only disturbing if one values a functioning democracy, and therefore the need for an informed populace. One wonders whether we, the consumers, who seem addicted to instant scrolling gratification are also the problem or have we just been trained?

As one reflects on the political waves of the last few months, there does seem to be a swinging of the left/ right pendulum. Has the leftist arc of the pendulum reached its pinnacle, and is it now moving back? For sure, the Federal Liberals are coming to realize that things are not quite as rosy for their fatuous leader as they originally thought. So, in recent days they have been frantically swinging their arms in a desperate effort to fan the flames of fear, the fear over those evil right wingers marching over the horizon to destroy all the good they have created.

Pierre Polivere, the Conservative opposition, has executed a dapper change in his haberdashery from Clark Kent to Superman, and is finally feeding with some effect on the overt stupidity of recent Liberal pronouncements. His biggest concern may be that he is peaking a little too soon, as the election is still a couple of years away.

That said it does seem like we are adopting the American version of an election in which the campaigning starts at least two years in advance. This will mean that we will be very sick and very tired of hearing from any of the politicians with their dumbed down commercials filled with statements of progress and diversity, of being “there for you”, “going forward” and “working together”. For her part Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who has cut some of her television cable to account for the rough financial times, will continue to stand behind Justin, and nod with vigour at every statement he makes. The flame proof Bill Blair having survived being tied to Commissioner Brenda Lucki, will try and remain hidden in his new job as Minister of National Defence. Foreign Minister Melanie Joly will continue to have her minions prepare for the unforgivable possibility of a Republican being elected in the United States; as she also “revamps” her department to make it a nice place to work. The Governor General will continue to distribute her valuable wisdom and insights to anyone who will invite her to an exotic locale, and will arrive with her twenty plus entourage in tow, but sadly will only be able to offer and provide box lunches on any future flights.

Locally, the domestic theatre of the absurd politics in Surrey continues, and Mayor Brenda Locke keeps on with her obfuscation and attempt to prolong any transition to the Surrey Police Service. Brenda it would seem simply does not want to admit defeat. Meanwhile, it is costing the Surrey taxpayers $8 million a month currently for the present state of policing, but Ms. Locke will continue to tell everyone she is concerned about future policing costs. She continues to blame the Provincial government and it would seem that most of the most recent delay is because most government workers decided to take the summer off. Apparently losing $8 million a month and getting a functioning police force in place is not enough reason to postpone anyone’s holidays.

And do you remember the campaign by the Surrey Mounties and the Mountie union, the National Police Federation, where they detailed how they were the better persons for the job, and that future staffing was not an issue? This while recently we have been watching the current Commissioner Duheme touring the rural areas of Saskatchewan, and hearing story after story from his own members on the lack of staffing and the inability to do the job. The irony is overwhelming. Duheme is even saying now that there is “a recruitment crisis” and the Mounties are now at a “cross roads” in terms of their survival in their present form. So who was lying, the present Mounties in charge in Surrey or the current Commissioner?

The Federal Mounties it seems, still have not figured it out why no one is applying for their department. They now believe that to increase recruitment, the solution will be to further lower the standards. The head of the RCMP in Saskatchewan is Rhonda Blackmore. Ms Blackmore and the brass heading the Saskatchewan RCMP have now created the Saskatchewan RCMP Indigenous Recruiting Unit; who among other things recently sponsored a three day event to recruit indigenous candidates, give them tours of Regina, and were there to “help them fill out the application forms.”

Meanwhile the Feds in RCMP Ottawa, the dreamland capital, are debating reducing the time away from the use of marihuana, before working as a police officer, down to 24 hours– from the current 28 days. By putting scientific evidence aside, there belief is that would then be able to attract those daily doobie smoking future recruits who also have an interest in crime fighting.

Here is a reflective thought. How about they try and attract future police by making the RCMP a viable and expert policing organization once again? It will take longer, it is definitely not an overnight solution, but it will work.

Unfortunately, over the last few weeks and months we continue see the baleagured and beseiged Mounties being thrown to the wolves. The most recent slap in the face was the 123 page report commissioned by the B.C. Public Safety Ministry which stated that Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, a group of over 440 officers with a budget of over $90 million “is neither effective in suppressing gang violence and organized crime nor is it providing the Province with an adequate return on investment”. They described it’s governance as a “tangle of organizations…” that its “funding is unstable”…and that there is a “lack of continuity”…and “high rates of turnover”. The RCMP response to this damning indictment on September 8 for this report that was issued on April 16th, was that they had not yet received a copy of the report. Can anyone imagine a private company or even a government department getting this kind of review and no one being held accountable? The head of CFSEU, RCMP Assistant Commissioner Manny Mann is saying nothing, so one can only hope that he is busy preparing his retirement papers.

Further to the RCMP in Saskatchewan, in the past few months it was also announced that they will be holding two inquiries. The first is the inquiry into the eleven individuals stabbed to death on the James Smith Cree Nation. There is little doubt that it will be comparable to the inquiry in Nova Scotia over the Portapique mass murders in terms of the eventual criticism and the conclusions that will be reached.

It was also in Saskatchewan that the Province is now forming a 70 person Marshall service to deal with property crime at the cost of $20 million, to supplant the lack of attention to rural property crime from the RCMP. It has not been a good time in Saskatchewan lately and it looks like they will be front and centre in the next few months.

So as we have reflected, have we learned? Not really. There seems to be a lot of sameness and it seems that the culprits of the past few months, will be the culprits of the next few months. The problems of the past are ongoing and will continue, the solutions proposed in the past, likely will be the solutions proposed for the future.

I wish I could offer more solace, but at least we took the time to reflect and take a deep breath.

Personally, I am looking forward to the Fall, but mainly because I love baseball– and there is nothing like October baseball.

The Political Fires of the North Shuswap…and the embers of discontent

Posted on September 4, 2023 by Pete Cross

This is a blog which is more personal than most, it is about the small village of Scotch Creek, where about 1,500 people live scattered along the edge of Shuswap lake in BC’s interior. This is personal because this is a place where I lived for five years, felt that I was home there, although I am sure I never reached the status of being a “local”. I moved away about two years ago, but still feel an ill-defined connection to those that I got to know, and I often still linger and dwell when looking over my photos of that time and place. When I lived there very few people knew of the existence of this small village, but as you probably know it has now received national attention, and the expected dedicated fevered media examination, only because for the last couple of weeks, the people there have been fighting for their lives and their property, against two raging wildfires. The Adams Lake fire and the Bush Creek East fire, which came together and within twelve hours co-joined to create a seemingly indestructible inferno, a combined fire capable of travelling 20 kms in 12 hours, and then being able to surround the community of the North Shuswap.

It was a coming together for which government and the British Columbia Wildfire Service had no answer, and one where there attention had already been diverted to the more populous fires in Kelowna. But this turned into something other than just the fires, because it was also a collision between the socialist oriented BC government and to a lesser extent the Federal government, versus a small group of independent rural residents, more libertarian, more independent, and more self-reliant than currently found in most urbanized areas of the country. The BC government could not relate. In the current political mind-set, it seems that when the duly elected feel constrained, when others are not conforming to their beliefs, then they should be treated with derision. They even resort to labelling and name-calling, and always place them in the category of the far right.

For the last number of years, the citizens of British Columbia, like many in the rest of Canada have been gladly and willingly led down the path of government being allowed to control of most of our daily lives. Theirs is a utopian society where the government knows best, it is a government that will protect us, that will feed us, house us, and all the “un-housed”, and keep us safe from the mental stressors and complexities of the real world. We are to be bubble-wrapped. And when this government mind set doesn’t find like minded individuals, or when it stumbles or fails in its goals, then the general populous demand to know why; and demand to know what the government is going to do to fix it. The government continually re-enforces these beliefs and spews a constant mantra of being “there for you”. The citizens in return are expected to never question, never provoke, and the government hides behind the opaque wall of bureaucracy. We have created a population with hands continually extended palms upward, for an infusion of the always flowing monies, to hold us over, and to make all the pain go away. Money is never an issue under this regime, Provincially or Federally.

It is at least politically successful, until one hits a pocket of the public that doesn’t like the government, a group that don’t want the government making all the rules and regulations, and still exude a stubborn pride of place. It is in many ways a throwback to earlier times. Your car breaks down, you fix it, your sewer backs up, you dig the trench to fix it, and for the most part there is nobody else around anyway. This is in essence the character of the community of Scotch Creek, they are the square pegs that the government wants to try and force into the round holes of compliance.

So as these two wildfires came together, the government body charged with fighting it is the British Columbia Wildfire Service, along with the BC Emergency Management Minister, Bowinn Ma, and she in turn is backed up by the NDP Premier David Eby. The government spin during this time is too predictable “we are here for you,” “to save you”, “to protect you” from the fires. How were they going to do that? The first order of their business plan is that they are going to get you to leave, to run from the fires, and to leave everything behind, everything you worked for, everything that is your material tie to the world. Secondly the Wildfire Service will be there to “mitigate” the disaster, which in a lot of cases is not to fight the fire, but to try and “control” it. As the Scotch Creek residents watched and physically saw the flames barreling down on them, they were told to flee, but their instinct was to fight, especially when there was no sign of the Wildfire Service, in fact the Service did not show up for a couple of days. They were un-officially abandoned.

So a pocket of individuals, about 300 people reacted instinctively, they decided they were not going to lose everything without a fight. They were local, they knew the woods, the lakes, the winds and the force of the fires coming at them. They also knew with their access to boats and the lake that they could never be fully cornered, they had a planned escape hatch. And so they did fight, with every water pump, shovel, and mechanized device that they could muster. In so doing and with an inhuman amount of energy they managed to save a number of properties, and many parts of their community. It was a formidable battle, and in the end they still lost 170 properties that were completely destroyed or heavily damaged despite their efforts.

And what was their government doing? They were on the radio and the television and pronouncing in front of anyone that would listen that it was not “safe to defy evacuation orders”, that these people were “un-trained”, that they needed to leave or they would be “arrested”. When someone pointed out that they actually couldn’t be arrested, they pointed out that they could if they strayed from their own property and tried to help a neighbouring residence. The government was fully immersed in their “process” and their Command Centres issued press release after press release how these people were endangering the lives of the firefighters, these renegades were daring to disobey their direction. The media as they always do in today’s environment, echoed the government concerns almost verbatim, feeling free to chastise those that had dared to stay and fight.

The people on the ground paid no heed. But as they fought on, they were running out of diesel and water and some other necessities to survive. Their like minded residents from across the lake gathered at the Finz restaurant and marina, and they gathered together and rallied to deliver food and goods to those in the fight by boat, driving across the smoke filled lake. What was the government response to this outright defiance? They ordered the police at the road blocks to turn back the food truck, not allow it through, which one can only assume was in an effort to try and force the residents to leave by cutting off their supply lines.

A twenty person protest fringe group showed up at the roadblock, one particular day, and the police went to the media stating that these people “intended to overwhelm the police” at their roadblock. The BCWS immediately issued a social media notice that they too were leaving, it was too dangerous for them, that these twenty “protestors”, had issued “threats of violence against these safety officers”. Interestingly the media also began referring to these protestors as part of a “convoy”.

In the end, the panic was short lived. A short time later the police rescinded their concern, and the BCWS realized they over-reacted and pulled down the media post. The RCMP then felt it necessary to speak about how their officers were “well trained and de-escalated the situation quickly.” They apparently disposed of this “massive” protest of 20 people in an hour with “no violence and no arrests.”

Meanwhile, as expected the Premier was touring the sites, focusing primarily on the voters of Kelowna and the Indigenous, photo ops of comforting those that had lost their homes and belongings; Trudeau was in Kelowna as well, but was warned about coming to the Shuswap it was reported, because of the dangerous backlash that was going on there. The Vancouver media who had sent all their resources to this “climate crisis”, now wandered the evacuation centres, trying to find someone that would cry on record about having lost everything or get video of them staring through binoculars at the distant shore to see if their house was still standing.

The people at Finz, continued to say to the authorities, whether you like it or not, we are going to get help to our friends. Ever slowly, the Wildfire Service knew they were not going to win the publicity battle, the opinion tide was turning, and if there is anything the government pays attention to is the social media –so their messaging began to morph. Ms. Ma became less strident in her pleadings to comply with the government evacuation orders, never admitting they were wrong, but that they were now going to “fold these people into our operations”. They were going to co-opt these malcontents, train them in the Wildlife Service ways, and then they could begin to allow these now fully “trained residents” into the area. The extensive training by the way in the end was for one day. So in the end they were now able to supplement the 1600 “expert” personnel which they hire each year, a third of whom are summer students with the “trained residents”.

The Wildfire Service were now also facing some hardened questions. There had been a controlled burn that some folks in the area questioned as to whether or not it had aggravated the situation. The Wildfire Service denied this possibility, and quickly countered with another media conference where the controlled burn was described as being a major “… success and saved hundreds of homes”.

One may never get to the truth of it all for quite some time. The Shuswap region lost 170 properties and 137,000 hectares burned, the Kelowna region lost 180 homes or outbuildings. One would think that there need to be some questions asked, although one should know that to question firefighters is akin to asking the Pope to become a Baptist. They are to be celebrated at all times.

To date the government according to the BC Forest Minister has spent $585 million, but not to worry, “the money is there” and they are not concerned about running out of money, “whatever it takes to protect people and property”. No one pointed out in his news conference that that there are a lot of people that may tell them that they in fact didn’t do a a very good job of saving peoples property. But why quibble and distort the popular narrative.

When you look at some basic numbers, it is fairly obvious that this is about mitigation, not about saving all. There are currently about 377 wildfires burning facing these 1600 firefighters, which amounts to about 4.2 persons per fire. Clearly they are not going to fight every fire. The question is how it is determined when and where they will fight? At least 40% of their budget goes to “contracted” aviation services, 130 helicopters and 35 fixed wing aircraft. Is contracting these services the way to go? Are helicopters with their single buckets the most efficient way of fighting the fire? Firefighting is clearly a very lucrative business for some, and when large amounts of money are being expended, maybe someone should be auditing costs and the financial controls in place.

Throughout this process, it has been continually been said that these fires were “historic”, that they were the result of “climate change”. Well that is not quite true either. According to the Fraser Institute, and an examination of the data, “the annual number of fires grew from 1959 to 1990 peaking in 1989 at just over 12,000 that year and has been trending down since.”

“From 2017 to 2021 (the most recent interval available) there were about 5500 fires per year, half the average from 1987 to 1991”. The annual area burned also “peaked 30 years ago”. The Wildfire service now bends the statistics slightly, and now contends that this year, the number of fires is “six times the 10 year average”.

So the question that needs to be asked is whether the tendency for fires to become larger and more dangerous is as some claim, something that “can be traced to our approaches in forest management”. This is not a question for the individuals actually on the ground dealing with the fires, working 12 hours shifts and sleeping in pup tents, these questions are for the leaders of our government and the bureaucratic functionaries of this service. The BC Wildfire Service at the very least need to be audited in terms of management, resources and the expenditure of funds. Do I expect it to happen? No. Remember these are fire fighters.

So as the politicians slowly work there way back to their safe urban environments, the media in tow, maybe some should also realize that maybe evacuation notices should not be the only tool in their policy belt. Maybe, just maybe, they should listen to those that still project and protect their independence. They are a minority to be sure, their numbers are dwindling, but the government needs to think as to whether coercion and ignoring their input is the best policy decision. These people are in fact reminiscent of that dreaded “colonial spirit”, reflections of that “greatest generation” which for the last number of years your governments have decided need to be criticized and humiliated and spoken to as ill-educated and unworthy. The truth is that we need more of them.

And yes, they did save my old house, and I for one are very grateful for those “untrained” firefighters.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by U.S. Fish and Wildfire Service – Some Rights Reserved

The Law and Disorder in Fairy Creek

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Pete Cross

If one ever wanted to find an example of the collision of the progressive narrative with the more real world of economics and industry, especially in British Columbia, one could do no better than looking to the logging industry of this Province. There is no need to talk about the obvious and well documented economic impact logging has had for this part of the world; it has been the primary and overwhelming industrial force in terms of economic growth and prosperity. It is also highly predictable therefore that the environmental warriors, including the fringe factions of the movement in the west, would naturally gravitate to and stake their ground on Vancouver Island. The war on “The Man” fits comfortably in the granola hemp-weaving establishment of the Island, surrounded as they are by old growth timber. It makes for an interesting philosophical coming together as there is a large divide between the folks on the Island who work and live in saw dust covered Wild Ass logger pants, and those sporting tie-dye shirts and harem pants.

This story starts in 2020, when the NDP government granted timber licences to an area north east of Port Renfrew, in the Fairy Creek watershed on Vancouver Island. Since that time the eco-warriors have declared and waged war against the Teal Cedar Products Limited, a member of the Teal-Jones group. Teal Cedar employs about 450 workers, and their logging permit allows them to harvest “old growth timber”. The contract for this project was estimated by Teal to be about $20 million in value. Keep that figure in mind when we go through the costs in this log cutting eco-war.

The protests started right away, and the company complained continually about their employees being harassed and their equipment damaged. One should be mindful of the fact that most of these protests and the protestors themselves are not necessarily “peaceful”– this is not a 1960’s sit in. In fact it became and has been labelled “one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history”.

Of course, this all led to an injunction being granted to remove the protestors in April 2021, that was needed to be enforced by the RCMP, but in particular the E division’s C-IRG (Community – Industry Reserve Group). Protests against economic development, such as pipelines and logging have become so predominant in British Columbia, that the RCMP felt the need to create a new separate section in 2017– just to deal with all the protests. This Mountie group was going to bring with it “strategic oversight…” and it would be based on the “Gold,Silver, Bronze command structures”. Anyone who reads this blog over time has come to realize, that as soon as one hear the words, strategic, and oversight, and it then gets lumped in with Gold, Silver, Bronze– one should automatically think bureaucracy and too many supervisors. The Mounties have an Egyptian love of pyramids in terms of structural organizations, and why have a single layer of supervision, when you can add a couple of more layers of oversight and decision making?

So how has it been going? To date at least 1188 individuals have been arrested, 900 for breach of a court ordered injunction, 200 with obstruction, and 12 assaults on police officers.

The activists are being fronted by an organization called the Rainforest Flying Squad. They are led by people like Kathleen Code who sums up the police action in their enforcement of the injunction as being there only to “knock the heads of peaceful protestors”.

This is never an easy situation for the police, you are being summoned to enforce the law, and you are up against a group who have no room for negotiation, in their view only a stoppage in the the logging can be tolerated. These activists for the most part, have no personal or vested responsibility in these situations, other than a hardened belief in their cause.

The Fairy Creek situation, seemingly like all things in British Columbia, is further complicated because of the Indigenous involvement and their various factions. One of the Indigenous First Nations, the Pacheedaht own three sawmills, and have a revenue-sharing agreement with the Province for a sharing of the proceeds from this particular timber contract. But there is a problem here as well, because the Indigenous groups are also divided, some welcoming the protestors, others scorning them and in their political power shared system, the elders of the Indigenous, are not in concert with the pro-logging groups of their Council.

In terms of protestor strategy, one would have thought that if one wished to protest, should be centred on the Provincial government policy and the granting of the licence in Victoria. In British Columbia of course, it is the NDP government that is in power, normally best political friends with any fringe eco viewpoint, but the fact that the protestors go after a private entity rather than camp out in Victoria is in itself interesting. The protest effort worked to a certain degree when the Province did agree during all this upheaval, to a two year deferral for the “old growth” logging component.

So after all the arrests the protest groups, wanted to challenge in any way possible the court injunction, and turned to the usual lawyers based out of Victoria who specialize in protest law. Those lawyers decided that the legal argument that they could possibly raise was that the legal “script” read to the protestors prior to them being forced to move out of the way and facing arrest if they did not do so– was flawed. They had discovered that in several cases, the RCMP read a “shortened script”. Grasping at this apparent legal straw, they wanted to argue that the protestors were therefore not given enough “actual knowledge” of what the injunction contained.

So began the King versus Emily Henderson “also known as Ryan Henderson” case.

The single bare issue is that in order for the police to establish criminal contempt, one had to establish “actual knowledge” or “wilful blindness” to the terms of the injunction. Justice Douglas Thompson of the BC Supreme Court in Nanaimo was a willing audience, and eventually held that even though the injunction itself was not ambiguous, he did agree with the protestor defence team that “the script did not provide sufficient information to fix the respondent with actual knowledge of its material terms, and there was insufficient evidence that the respondent was wilfully blind to those terms”. The Crown was with little doubt somewhat perplexed as would anybody in reading this decision, so they appealed it to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada were not willing to get involved– and turned down the Crown appeal with no reasons given.

Admittedly it is not unusual in these days, that common sense seems a little in short supply when it comes to the law, and it quite often appears that reality seems to sometimes take a back seat to the exactitude of the written legal argument. But here we are given to believe in this legal argument that Henderson, standing facing a group of RCMP officers, who are reading them a script in the middle of the woods, which in essence was commanding them to leave– we are being asked to believe that the script was insufficient for them to understand the meaning and the intent of the injunction, and therefore the intent of the police in being there. Nobody that has ever stood in that position would believe that they did not understand why the police were there. Nobody. It is also well known that if you want to find some self-educated lawyers, find any protest group, as they are the first ones to tell you “they know the law”.

What did this legal “victory” mean or accomplish. Nothing, absolutely nothing. It just put everyone back to square one. Crown Counsel had to find the other 146 cases where the persons involved were read the same “shortened” script and drop those cases. They stated that “Those cases have been dropped because their ability to succeed was placed in doubt”. There are still 210 cases before the courts.

On Tuesday of this week, the RCMP was back at the blockades, as were the protestors. Three people were once again arrested, and one was arrested for assaulting a police officer. The RCMP says that there have been “numerous violations of persons obstructing, impeding and having interfered with forestry operations”. There also have been further reports of harassment and vandalism to the forestry workers and their equipment.

To date the RCMP has spent $18,716,969 in Fairy Creek, most of that in wages. The courts have been jammed with cases, but there is no estimate of that legal bill to date.

The C-IRG continues to bend over backwards to accommodate the “Indigenous cultural matters” and have had to go to class to learn of such things as the “handling of sacred items during protest arrests” and to make sure that they are operating “consistent with the standards and expectations set by bill C-15 and the adoption of the principles of UNDRIP (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) .” That no doubt was probably a Gold Command decision.

However despite all this genuflection to the woke, the C-IRG, to add insult to injury, is now being investigated by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission after receiving complaints from these same protestors in March 2023. They are going to look into the “activities and operations of the C-IRG and their systemic compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” Furthermore, this same allegedly independent body the CRCC , is another example of inert bureaucracy, so they have now hired an “Indigenous based law firm” to assist them. They have hired the renowned Turtle Island Law firm. A two person law firm which was formed in 2022, who say they are going to gather testimony “in a de-colonial, Indigenized, and trauma informed manner”. Enough said. Apparently no one can see the clear conflict of interest, just as no one should now expect an unbiased reporting.

So as of today, the protests will continue, the injunction will still need to be enforced, and this time the RCMP will no doubt read the full script– and then this whole circle dance of ridiculousness will continue.

Photo Courtesy of deejayqueue via Flickr Commons – Some rights reserved

“Double dipping” for China?

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Pete Cross

There has been a new case surface in the last week or two, which caught the attention of these tired old eyes. It was when the RCMP made a grand national pronouncement that they had arrested and charged an ex-Mountie; William “Bill” Majcher , with two counts under Sections 22 and 23 of the little used Security of Information Act.

The story caught my attention on a number of fronts. First, I knew of Mr. Majcher, but only in passing; secondly, the investigation was done by the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), and it was the INSET unit in Quebec, even though it very much sounded like the offences occurred in British Columbia. That seemed a little unusual and could only mean that there were others involved and there was a trust issue. For those that needed to be reminded, INSET is the RCMP agency which is the direct liaison with CSIS (Canada’s spy agency). Therefore one must always be aware that CSIS and thus INSET often work on “political targets”, and therefore their mandate is often at the direction of the government or with the approval of government. There is little to no police independence when talking about either of those entities. So we should also keep in mind that old adage that “one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.”

With this in mind, China and its alleged political interference in recent Canadian elections has been a dominant story and pre-occupation for the last few months in Canada’s mainstream media. The Liberals have been under a great deal of political fire for their handling of the information surrounding the election interference, and their lack of investigation of it. So it seemed slightly more than coincidental that this case against Majcher was brought to the forefront in terms of its timing, and the obvious question as to whether it was being done to ease the pressure on the Liberals. Adding to the suspicion, is that these cases were historical, in that they occurred sometime during the years from 2014-2019. They also had said that this particular investigation had nothing to do with the alleged election interference. INSET says that their investigation surfaced as a result of a “complaint” in 2021, and now in 2023 they were bringing forth charges.

The accused, Mr. Majcher, was a Mountie from 1985 to 2007, some twenty-two years, and “retired” from the Inspector rank from the now defunct Integrated Market and Enforcement Team (IMET); an investigative group which had been mandated to investigate criminal activity in the Vancouver stock exchange and other financial markets. I met Mr. Majcher when he was the Inspector in charge, and we met out of necessity as he was the overseeing officer for an internal investigation that I completed on a Vancouver Police Department matter. He didn’t really pay much attention to the details of my report and signed off the investigation with little to no question. My first impressions of Mr. Majcher stand out now– and have been echoed by many people who knew him during his career. He began by showing me around his rather sumptuous office down on the Vancouver harbour front, and it was impressive from any government employee perspective, with its two storey high windows and its unhindered view of the moneyed yachts. It all turned out to be part of his pitch to me to come to their section, as they were looking for an experienced team leader/primary file investigator at the time.

He was a pretty impressive salesman about the job, but he was an obvious salesman, in that stock broker, car salesman kind of way. I later found out that before joining the RCMP he had in fact been a Eurobond trader. (Eurobonds by the way were one of the first tools developed and marketed to aid in the hiding of funds offshore) He was also clearly intelligent, but his flaw may have been in believing that he was always the smartest person in the room. He was always talking, but not overly concerned with listening. I considered the job at the time because of my interest in economic crime (much cleaner than homicide), but then turned it down after researching it a bit, and learning that the section was having trouble getting their feet off the ground, due to a variety of reasons and legal complications.

As it turned out, Mr. Majcher later got himself in some hot water while with IMET, and he became the subject of an internal investigation in 2005. I was told at the time, that it had something to do with his continuing involvement in the stock market, but I never heard the full story. In the end, presumably rather than face further investigation he “retired”– the always tried and true option the Mounties go to when handling troublesome employees. The public material says that Mr. Majcher in 2006, had already moved to Hong Kong– clearly never one to let the grass grow under his feet.

Like every ex-Mountie who is looking for a double-dipping job, and populate LinkedIn, Mr. Majcher talked up his previous investigational work experience and touted himself as an extraordinary undercover officer who continually risked life and limb in pursuit of the bad guy. His resumé was clearly bloated, but Mr. Majcher in fact did do a good job as an undercover operator on a couple of investigations. In the roles he played he was always portraying “the money guy” — always the salesman. His most famous case was that of the case against Vancouver lawyer Martin Chambers in the late 1990’s. Mr. Chambers during his hey-day was a prominent Vancouver lawyer who was suspected of large scale money laundering for the Russians and the Hells Angels. During a staged video-taped meeting in Florida with Mr. Majcher playing his role of financial underworld figure, Mr. Chambers took possession of $700,000 cash, and provided offers to handle millions of dollars. Mr. Majcher was the primary undercover officer and had led Chambers to believe that he monies were coming from the Columbian cartels at the time. It was a joint FBI-RCMP sting, and it was successful, and Mr. Chambers was sentenced to 15 years and 8 months which he served in an Arkansas jail.

The Chambers case would be the case that Mr. Majcher seems to have used as his plank to build a spring-board into a position in Hong Kong. He described himself as a “risk assessment officer” for the investment banking community, and that he had moved there to “establish an international banking platform on behalf of Hong Kong merchant bank, representing a number of Chinese state owned and non-state owned enterprise clients engaged in overseas capital world activities”. Not only would he bring to the table his extensive investigational expertise, but they would be able to employ “military grade cyber technology” in the pursuit for their clients.

He later formed the company EMIDR in 2016, a “Hong Kong based cyber-security company”. In a video he described himself as “a hired gun to help either large corporations or governments to get back what is rightfully theirs”.

Now most of us can see the salesman oozing out of these marketing pronouncements. But, despite the clear aggrandizement of his capabilities and the obvious exaggeration as to what they could bring to the world of money laundering, nevertheless, Mr. Majcher was indeed tapping into or at the very least trying to tap into a potential gold mine.

And this is where it all gets rather complicated.

It gets complicated in terms of the story line, and it gets complicated in the list of characters who may be playing in the game. First and foremost, this story is about money laundering, at least on the surface. But it is also about the many layers and degrees of inherent corruption. It is a fact that mainland China has had numerous individuals remove monies from their country, contrary to their own laws, as well as ill gotten gains that were taken out of the country from illegal activities. By any measure it is estimated that they have lost billions of dollars over the last number of years. And as you guessed, there have been a few select countries which these suspect individuals have turned to in order to facilitate the laundering of those funds. One of course, high on the list, is Canada, and specifically Vancouver. (do you remember the Cullen Commission?) Another area was along the “Gold coast” of Australia and the city of Melbourne. Their were other locations of interest to these monies seeking a home and the luxury of anonymity such as New York and Chicago. Hong Kong which was a city designated as a special administrative region of China, was heavily involved in the movement of those monies wanting to escape from China, due to its geographic proximity and the lack of foreign exchange controls.

The people who have orchestrated these money movements are now considered by the Chinese government to be criminals. As a result China started two projects; Sky Net in 2015 and Project Dragon in 2019, to track down and try and get back those monies. The latter project focused on the gold coast of Australia and those funds that were being used to purchase real estate. China of course, as Majcher himself stated in an interview, needs to “walk a very fine line”, as to the perception of anyone working for a foreign government. So China smartly formed public/ private partnerships with various firms, who would assist them in tracking down individuals and finding the monies. As expected they went to those with knowledge of the host countries who advertised themselves as having “expertise” in that country along with their “investigative resources”. Enter Majcher and other similar firms, especially those firms staffed by ex-police officers. Mr. Majcher openly said during a television interview that “I have a commercial relationship with entities that are in themselves associated in some form or another with policing authorities in China”.

Of course, most of these ex police officers who have entered this private field, have little or minimal hands on experience, they are primarily being hired because of their “contacts” in policing. Mr. Majcher is not a cyber expert, smashing the keyboard, hacking the demographic data sites to find someone; he is likely just picking up the phone and calling persons in the policing world who do have that information at their finger tips, and are willing to assist them in finding people. Mr. Majcher worked for the most part in British Columbia, ergo his contacts will be in British Columbia and in particular Vancouver, this hot bed for Chinese money laundering in Canada.

Two ex-Aussi police officers, Jason McFetridge and Austin Whittaker, in the Melbourne Australia area who had a similar firm to Mr. Majcher were interviewed about how the plan to recover the funds would come about and how it would be executed. Both maintain that it was a completely legitimate pursuit to get their client’s money back. It was a simple plan, but one that bordered on extortion. They would identify the people with the apparent illicit funds, confront them, tell them they are on to them, and that they needed to sign over their properties to the ex-police officer company. They in turn would then sell the company and send the monies back to China for a fat commission. The obvious inference, should the accused not “voluntarily” sign over the money, was that there would be repercussions for their families back in China, or telling them they face jail time if they ever return to China etc.

Does China have a right to pursue criminals and money launderers? It would seem legally justifiable, but what becomes questionable is of course how they go about it. Do they have the right to have hired personnel threaten people and insinuate sinister repercussions–that strains legality. It would have to be at the very least an inference and not a direct threat. The Skynet project apparently identified over 3,000 people that the Chinese government felt had broken their laws.

It would be easy to say the Chinese are wrong, and this is a step gone too far. And of course, what if the people they are pursuing are not criminals?

Historically Canada, and in particular Vancouver, has a very murky bordering on sinister relationship with communist China.

In 2015 China tried to sign agreements with the CBSA and the RCMP to assist them in pursuing their people of interest. In the late 1990’s Lai Changxing was considered “China’s most wanted fugitive”, a man who had been implicated in several corruption scandals in China involving a large smuggling ring. He evaded arrest and settled in Vancouver, where he was arrested by Canadian authorities, went through a long extradition battle but eventually was sent back to China in 2011, where he was given a life sentence. So at one time, the Canadian government was participating in the very same thing.

There is the Meng Wanzhou matter where a high ranking member of the Chinese establishment and the Chief Financial officer for Huawei was arrested in Vancouver, on behalf of the Americans and was facing extradition. China retaliated by arresting two innocent Canadians as “spies”, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. Meng eventually reached a “deferred prosecution agreement” with the Americans, the charges were dropped, and she was returned to China after having been under house arrest for close to three years. During this time she was given VIP protection to and from court by the Lions Gate Risk Management group, a group also filled with many ex-police officers who also advertise their specialities in “Money laundering and Asset tracing”. Mr. Majcher during this time admits to also being contacted by China looking for some help and monitoring of the case against Meng.

And let us not forget the matter of the ex-Mountie, Ben Chang, who during the Wanzhou hearings refused to testify about his role in the arrest of Meng Wanzhou while an RCMP officer. Since the arrest time, Mr. Chang had turned his old foreign liaison posting with the RCMP in Hong Kong into a retirement job as a senior security officer in the resort casino Galaxy Macau. His last minute refusal cast doubt on the credibility of the government lawyers who maintained that the RCMP did not share any information on Ms. Weng’s computers and mobile phones. Somewhat mysteriously, the prosecutors did not subpoena Mr. Chang. The Galaxy group as it turned out is owned by Lui Che Woo, a Hong Kong businessman who served on the standing committee of an advisory group to Bejing. Mr. Majcher it has been reported to have been at one time Mr. Chang’s supervisor.

INSET has hinted that they are looking at other officers involved in Mr. Majcher’s case. One of the names surfacing is Ken “Kim” Marsh, another ex-RCMP officer, who has written a book about his exploits entitled “Cunning Edge”. Mr. Marsh who has been named as a co-conspirator with Mr. Majcher, but not yet charged, once cooperated with Majcher on cases; and Marsh identifies himself as his “Mountie friend”. In his book Marsh talks about being “hooked up” with Russian millionaire Vladimir Antonov for a “due diligence report” that he charged Antonov $500,000 to prepare. Antonov would later be charged with embezzling “hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Lithuania”. Marsh is now seemingly perplexed by his naming in this most recent Majcher investigation. As he says in the introduction to his book, “he gave decades of his life to his work, all in the pursuit of bringing bad guys to justice…for his clients…and society at large”. He doesn’t mention that it was also primarily to make money.

So what are the charges specifically? Section 22 is labelled “preparatory acts” and states in essence that anyone who enters Canada,… or retains or gains access to any information… for the benefit of a foreign entity, a terrorist group, or an economic entity… and then communicates that information to them is guilty of an offence. This section refers back to Section 16, 17, 19 and 20 which get more specific as to whether the information is designed to “harm Canadian interests…or is reckless with that information”. Section 20 deals with using the information in association with a “foreign entity” to “induce, by threat, accusation, menace or violence, any person to do anything or cause anything to be done”. Section 23 is just the “conspiracy” section saying that one can not conspire to do any of the above.

So there is three elements to these offences that need to be proven. Was Majcher working for a foreign entity? Did they obtain information that was being guarded by the government, and finally did they threaten anybody or coerce anybody to take some action on behalf of the foreign entity? In terms of the press briefing by Inspector David Beaudoin they say that the charges surround “preparatory acts for the benefit of a foreign entity and conspiracy”. As stated previously, they began their investigation in the fall of 2021, and it was for the time period of 2014-2019. There are going to be some significant legal hurdles. Does the government of China have the right to pursue persons they consider thieves and money launderers? Are private investigators, indirectly working for the foreign government allowed to make inquiries as to money laundering and attempt to find those persons? America, Britain, Australia and even Canada using various investigational instruments make inquiries constantly for this same purpose. The RCMP and Canada have directly participated in doing the very same thing, but of course they will argue that they and only they are the safe-guarders of that information.

If one is interested in this kind of thing and would like a full view of the extent of the problem, I recommend the book “Moneyland” which the Economist magazine called the “book of the year”, written by British journalist Oliver Bullough. It is a deep dive into money laundering and the people behind it, including the lawyers, bankers and governments that both front face the problem and are part of the problem. The city of Vancouver is featured as a sought after refuge for the kleptocrats from China, Russia, and south Asia and he outlines the number of groups trying to track them down, often frustrated by the lack of government action on the issue. It is such a broad and expansive problem that he argues that it is under cutting the pillars of western democracy.

There is one other aspect of this story that is intriguing. That is the media coverage of this story led by journalists like Sam Cooper changes the motivation behind China. Cooper who is never shy in trumpeting his investigative journalism skills on the subject of money laundering in Vancouver. As it turns out he has admittedly conferred in the past with Kim Marsh on stories such as the Cameron Ortis story; and it would be a pretty easy assumption that he has RCMP sources feeding him information. The interesting part is that his take, and therefore the apparent take of the RCMP is that China is “not interested in getting back their money…only interested in controlling the people in the country”. In other words it is all part of a conspiracy to control the Canadian government through spies and agents.

It is an interesting postulation, but there is little to no evidence to support it. There is no doubt that China has for decades searched out persons and politicians who would speak positively about China and possibly try to influence legislation. While in Security Service in the 1980’s and early 1990’s we were already watching the Chinese operatives in Canada trying to influence politicians. The problem is one of definition. In the U.S. for example, they simply call them “lobbyists”. Here, in this country there is not even a foreign registry set up, so how concerned or worried about it is the Canadian government? In Mr. Majcher’s case, there is much more evidence that China is going after the money, they have always been aggressive industrialists, and there is an abundance of evidence that there that there is a treasure trove of ex- Mounties who are willing to set their flexible ethics aside and give them a hand.

There is politics wrapped around politics in this investigation, and the timing is highly suspicious and of major interest will be who initiated the original complaint. In this new age of ingrained disinformation and when our media seems to have an agenda, it is increasingly necessary to question sources. But, when it comes to unravelling the mysteries of China and its cultural layers, one needs to be very careful indeed. The only aspect of this story that seems to bear out consistently, is that there are apparently plenty of of ex-cops willing to help– for a fee of course.

Photo courtesy of Images Money via Flickr Commons – Some rights reserved

A Surrey post-mortem…

Posted on July 22, 2023 by Pete Cross

We have been following this issue for a long time, so when it finally reaches a possible conclusion, I find myself obligated, with some reluctance, to write about it once again. As those of you know who have been following the story, the RCMP is now effectively losing jurisdiction, in its biggest detachment in Canada. So it is news, but it has been truly tiring to watch this fiasco unfold, led by a couple of politicians in Surrey, like MacCallum and Locke, both of whom would be perfect characters for covers on Mad Magazine.

When asked recently on a local radio show in Vancouver how I felt about the NDP and Mike Farnworth’s decision as to who was going to police Surrey, and have now decided to go forward with the new Surrey Police Service, my only answer was that I felt “relieved”. It was in my opinion, a logical, fair and proper decision, when one considers all of the circumstances and disregard those speaking who clearly had an agenda. The problem was that it took too long to make that decision, and the delays affected hundreds of police officers on both sides of the argument. We won’t mention the monetary costs of these delays. Ms. Locke should have been told from the outset to go to hell, that the process to move forward with a City force was already in motion, and she with the short term memory affliction, was in the beginning part of it ,and in favour of a city police force. Since then she has been playing revenge politics for several months, in a campaign that was both misguided and misinformed, propped up no doubt by the senior management of the RCMP, who seemed to be continually willing to feed her disinformation.

So lets do a bit of an autopsy on what happened.

The biggest issue, the Y cut at an autopsy if you will, was the ability of the RCMP to actually fulfill their policing contract in terms of staffing and resourcing. Everyone who has been a Mountie in the last thirty years, if not longer, could tell you that the Mounties have been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years. There mandate and their abilities could not meet their stated goals. They are still doing it, and they can not keep up, whether in a city, in a Province or Nationally. The numbers simply don’t add up. Everyone knew this, except apparently Ms. Locke.

Ms. Locke in a statement after the announcement said that the Province decision was “disappointing, misguided and based on inaccurate assumptions”. There are currently 1500 vacancies in the Province of British Columbia, 500 are simply un-filled positions, and there are 1000 on some form of leave. Nationally the RCMP will put about 600 officers through Depot, and E Division would get a portion of them; and there were over 800 departures from the RCMP during that same time period. Please Ms. Locke, I beg you, what don’t you understand? In their response to the Province as to how the RCMP were going to fulfill their promises, I am told that their ingenious plan was to disembowel the plainclothes sections (temporarily no doubt) and put them back in uniform and on the road. I ask you Ms. Locke, how is that not the work of the little Dutch boy putting his finger in the dyke? Did you simply accept the RCMP senior management explanation without hesitation or examination?

As we continue our pathology, we get to the vital organs, the root cause of the RCMP conundrum falls to the single fundamental justification and reason that they have managed to survive in this Province. They have always had one go-to argument. They are “cheaper”. As mentioned numerous times in previous blogs, the RCMP portrayed themselves right to the end as the Walmart, not the Gucci police department. Of course, once unionization took place that became a much harder argument, and it got even harder when the union signed the recent new contract. Now, just the negotiated back pay is killing most small town policing budgets. The other counter-argument is, you always get what you pay for.

Lets delve a little deeper. The promotion and transfer policy of the RCMP does not allow for the development of its own officers, nor provide the continuity necessary for effective and expert investigations. The RCMP has a system where if you want to advance, usually you have to move to a different section, or a different detachment. Gone is any knowledge of the particular field, and the Mounties are famous for promoting in bosses who have no idea or experience in that particular field. So the Drug corporal, goes to the Fraud Section as a Sargent, the Community Policing Sargent goes to Major Crime as a Staff Sargent, now in charge of homicide investigations. The officer who has been policing Terrace, or Anahim Lake BC for the last number of years, now finds himself standing in the atrium of Surrey detachment wondering how to get to the washrooms. This is even more true in the executive ranks, Inspector and above, who flit from station to station about every two years, all because the Federal RCMP priorities are managing “people”, “diversity” and “inclusion”, not on whether or not someone knows the job. All investigations, whether it be a break-in or a homicide depend on that in-house homegrown expertise. One simply can not seed and grow expertise in the current Mountie system.

There is a single reason why the RCMP Surrey body is laying on this theoretical stainless steel gurney. The managers and executive officers of the RCMP are the root cause of their now unceremonious departure from Surrey. The uniform contingents of the RCMP, who make up the majority presence of the RCMP in Canada, have been at the very lowest priority in terms of management attention for decades. Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec may be the central head of the organization, but the head is not attached to the body. The current and past executives have been consumed and hypnotized by such things as writing “Mission statements”, self-advancement, and thus the advancing the size of the bureaucracy. The rank structure is completely determined on the number of bodies one is supervising. So if I have 25 officers under supervision, but I can grow it to 32, I will go from a Staff Sargent to an Inspector. The exams for that promotion have nothing to do with direct knowledge of the job, but claim to be testing how you “manage people.” There are no questions as to knowledge of any given job or ones that test the level of any given expertise. If one were able to examine the internal growth of rank and structure in the RCMP, Surrey Detachment with its current bloated rank structure, would be the perfect case study. When that is the driving force in any organization, suffice to say that the Peter Principle can and will be found in the nooks and crannies of every RCMP office.

Finally, there is one issue which rarely gets talked about. The RCMP has since I have been around displayed an arrogance as to their capabilities and expertise. It seems to permeate their dealings with other organizations and it often carries over into the investigational and administrative fields. Where it started, or how it originated has never been clear to me. You were not on the “job”, as the City cops used to say, in the Mounties you were a “member” implying some elite club. They seemed to interpret the Red Serge as a symbol of some level of implied superiority –and they would continuously point out they are the “national” police force, and got to hang with the Queen and hold the door for the Prime Minister. They were the self-appointed experts in all manner of policing, whether it was in the middle of Alberta, or Quebec, or Prince Edward Island, in a small northern outpost or in the city.

There is a significant push in the Ottawa cognoscenti to make the RCMP like an FBI, this too implies some level of arrogance. (the FBI has many issues as well by the way). All of this is to suggest that maybe the de-throning from Surrey will help in some ways to bring the Mounties down to earth, to re-discover that in policing it is how you perform the job, which is and should always be the measurement, not who you are or who you represent. The arrogance needs to go away.

One has to conclude by saying that I personally enjoyed a very good career in the RCMP, they treated me well. I have no complaints. I made great and continuing friendships, got to do what I wanted to do, and worked on some interesting and challenging investigations. It wasn’t the colour of the uniform that I remember the most.

But during my service, the cracks were beginning to show, we were seeing some poor results with the often ridiculous policy and administrative decisions, most times originating in a reaction to some political thrust. When faced with legitimate push back the managers and the executives did not wish to listen to the troops on the ground, in fact they would ignore them. To voice an opinion was often met with retribution, and that arrogance would creep into administrative and investigational discussions, the newly promoted Inspector knowing better than all those that had gone before them.

Change is they say the only inevitable constant, but the RCMP are one of the worst at adapting to change. The ominous and imposing multiple levels of bureaucratic nonsense stymies all attempts to reform or simplify. Quite frankly the current executives of the RCMP should now retire or resign, they have failed, and they have gloriously failed the uniform contingents which even they referred to as the “backbone” of the organization. They talked the talk, they just couldn’t bring themselves to walk the walk. They bought into and espoused a system of aggrandizement and self-promotion leaving the true core of the organization to drift in the wind. They also became political when they should have stayed neutral and silent. They spoke of polices and agreed to policies, in which they personally did not believe, such as “systemic racism”, in order to be political and continue their chance to advance. Every press conference if called to speak to a job well done, was flooded by the executives, all rushing the stage, and squeezing in to be part of the press photo. The junior officers who solved the file, or worked the file, always pushed to the background and out of sight. They long ago decided to “spin” the press rather than be informative. They even began to lie.

I believe that you are now witnessing a ground swell in the country which in a number of years most of what we now recognize in policing will be transformed, altered– some for the good, some for the bad. The golden age of the RCMP in British Columbia seems over, they are facing inevitable change. One can not celebrate, in fact it is sad to some degree, but one can only be “relieved” that the individual officers involved can now get on with it.

The autopsy of the Surrey RCMP is complete, my alma mater has met the end, the conclusion as to cause of death– is that the patient died of internal bleeding and constant executive mal-practice.

Photo provided by finalwitness courtesy of Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Harassment Complaints and officers searching for gold…

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Pete Cross

It would be easy to speak to the nonsense that continues in Surrey and the shenanigans of Mayor Locke, or the fact that our Prime Minister has revealed himself to be a “Swiftie”, and is apparently devastated by the fact that Taylor isn’t scheduled to appear in Canada this year– but those topics are too easy. They are the types of subjects that are repeatedly proving themselves too easy to poke fun at and there is no challenge in it. And It’s summer, so one’s thoughts should be filled with images of sand, sun and warm rays. Nevertheless the ridiculousness continues to keep washing over us, as much as we try to not watch the news or listen, we are being inundated by the blarney.

So lets talk about sexual harassment and harassment complaints in the RCMP. Nothing like a good debate on sexual harassment to kill the beach boys vibe. It is a serious issue to be sure, but one which the RCMP, or more specifically the Liberal government has managed to turn into another three ring victim compassion circle. As is often the case, my interest and then my incredulity, was spiked by a recent CBC article. By the way, should you ever wish to get riled up, the CBC is usually the best place to start, as they are continually searching the world over, for the next victim, the next devastated community, the next world crisis which is forcing us to the brink of extinction. In terms of the story in question, one has to suspect that when they ran this sexual harassment story, they were clearly having a slow day, or were maybe more concerned with the current campaign by the Liberals to try and get Facebook to pay them for putting their television news clippings on their website.

The CBC story begins with the usual flabbergasted proclamation in the headline, that the Independent Centre for Harassment Resolution is, god help us all, backlogged. Justice is not being done, justice is on hold, victims, and their lawyers are forced to wait long lines, bureaucratic stalemates are everywhere. The CBC voiced their outrage, and then they needed to go find a couple of prattling victims to outline and demonstrate these nefarious examples of injustice.

First, one needs to remember that the RCMP has already paid out $125 million to 2,304 female officers who made claims of being sexually harassed or abused over the last thirty or so years; this averages out to $54,253.47 paid out per complainant. That was in 2016. Then, a few years later they then paid out another $100 million to female employees who were in “non-policing roles” with the RCMP. But that was clearly not enough for the liberal gods of outrage.

On June 30th, 2021 the government and the RCMP then created the Independent Centre for Harassment Resolution. This was another bureaucratic group that was going to act as an “investigative” body to deal with the apparent and rampant ongoing harassment that was taking place daily in the misogynistic RCMP. They have proven to be too popular. Since opening their doors, they say they are now dealing with “hundreds of sexual assault and harassment complaints”. This has led to “long delays”, and now having to apologize due to the fact that in their initial mandate they were claiming that the time line for any complaint was going to be a maximum of 12 months.

In their current reporting the ICHR says that in the two years of their existence, they have now received 940 notices/complaints– 165 in this year alone. They have completed 325 investigations to date, and at least 71 are still awaiting the assignment of an “investigator”. Of course because of this deluge of discontent, they are now not able to stick to their 12 month timeline.

These numbers seem high. Is it possible that this has become another place where the ever sniffing Mounties have picked up the scent of gold. Has this become another Veterans Disability pot of shiny substance, where certain members, who are willing to abuse the system, are now also lurking in great numbers? I realize some people may take offence at this proclamation, that this will be seen as a damning indictment which aims at the honesty and credibility of the officers involved. I will apologize in advance, to those with legitimate claims. However there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence, a great deal of smoke, of this simply being the latest pot at the end of the rainbow. This has excited the less than scrupulous officers, who we all know are out there.

Of course, we are not allowed to look in, all of the files are guarded by Privacy “concerns”, so we will never know the true extent of fraudulent claims, unless someone on the inside speaks out. But, no worries, the CBC is an expert in seeking out the victims and have enticed some to come forward to at the very least, provide the nature of their complaint.

The example provided by the CBC concerns the case of officer Nicole Patapoff, who speaks through her lawyer, Sherry Shir. Ms. Patapoff is an eight year member, who was just coming off maternity leave, so has probably six or seven years active service, and she was thus required to attend firearms qualifications at her local range to “re-qualify”. Ms. Patapoff was having troubles on the firing range, with the strength in her “trigger finger”. Now, for those that don’t know, this is a common problem, as it requires some strength to pull the trigger and hold it while maintaining breathing and control. Every time I was at the range doing the same thing, there was inevitably someone who was having problems with their trigger finger not being strong enough, or they had small hands, which made it more difficult for consistent trigger pull. Often the instructor will encourage the person to actually do finger exercises, in their off-time, to try and get it right.

The offence according to Ms. Patapoff, was that the instructor told her to go home, clean the bathroom with windex or something similar to help strengthen that trigger finger. One could only assume that he meant that by using the spray device would help build up strength, but of course that is not how Ms. Patapoff took it. She was angered, and said that the statement was “misogynistic, belittling, offensive, disrespectful, and demeaning”.

An 18 month harassment investigation ensued.

The eventual but short lived good news is that her complaint was dismissed, as not meeting the criteria under the Canada Labour Code.

Had sanity finally prevailed?

But wait, as you guessed, the madness of it all continues. There is no administrative appeal process. So, lawyer Sherry Shir took the case to Federal court and argued that the complaint was “dismissed improperly”, and launched an appeal on behalf of Ms. Patapoff.

Court documents now reveal that the original investigator has now been removed from the approved list of ICHR investigators; and earlier this month the RCMP have now agreed to assign another investigator to this case. Would anyone like to guess what the new outcome will be?

They are also complaining that it is all taking too long. Amanda Nemer the Executive Director of the ICHR blames the delays on the “lack of market availability for external investigators”. One would think that you would only have to go to LinkedIn because they seem to have lists of people who advertise themselves as “investigators”. But, I will accept her explanation, as who in their right mind would want to head up this massive investigation. One must also keep in mind it took the first investigator 18 months for an investigation that would boil down to two questions. Did you say it? Is this contrary to the Canadian Labour Code?

Marco Mendocino, the Minister responsible, and quickly trying to overtake Bill Blair as the most incompetent Minister in the Liberal government, is heartened by “the rise in complaints”, that it is a “positive sign as it demonstrates the confidence that the RCMP members and employees have in this system”. So one could assume if every singe person in the RCMP made a complaint, Mr. Mendocino would interpret this to mean that everything was good because they had faith in the process.

The second case, albeit briefly mentioned by the CBC is the one involving RCMP officer Todd Gray. You will remember him; he is the member complaining of harassment, and one of his complaints is that he had to ride in the horse trailer while assigned and on the Musical ride. (by the way, I am told that that was a common practise when the Ride was travelling with the horses).

If these two examples are the best cases for the argument against sexual harassment and bullying, then the RCMP and this government is in some serious trouble in terms of their credibility.

The problem with all of this seems to be that the Mounties are just one group, that has come to the realization that when it comes to suing the Federal government, there are certain cases you will always win– regardless of the evidence or lack of evidence. Any suit you can bring that deals with harassment, sexual harassment, disabilities, or indigenous rights will in effect be settled– the government and the RCMP will never go to court. When anyone brings forward a case that can involve these topics, it seems to chum the waters for the circling lawyer sharks. The lawyers and their clients know that virtually all of these types of cases end with the conversation “What will it cost to make this go away?” It is now well established that the Liberal government will never be forced into a headline where they are appearing to be insensitive to these issues. Money is no object, when one needs to be seen and are being directed so as to be on the right side of good.

Unfortunately, there are certain officers who can convince themselves that any infraction or misstatement should result in compensation. I know of many cases of officers abusing the Veterans Affairs disability system, and I know many cases of officers benefitting from the sexual harassment settlements where the evidence was dubious or weak at best. It’s all anecdotal, although many officers can’t help themselves and brag about their winnings, because no one is allowed to know, and therein lies the beauty of the fraud. There is no punishment or redress for making a vexatious complaint, you simply give it a try and see if it works.

So, I am sorry Ms. Patapoff, your complaint from the outside looking in, appears ridiculous, you are wasting the resources of government. But, I also suspect that in a year or two, if you hang in there, you will get a settlement and that it will be paid out, just to have you go away. It may not amount to much in the end, once your lawyer takes their 30% however. And if you continue your policing career, prepare to get much more offended by what people say to you– it will be more offensive than someone telling you to squeeze a Windex applicator.

Photo courtesy of Paul Scott Via Flickr Commons — Some Rights Reserved

Tortured children, a murdered child and an apology…

Posted on June 26, 2023July 7, 2023 by Pete Cross

A few have accused this author, on more than a few occasions, of being somewhat cynical, hard, lacking in empathy, and for the most part, I plead guilty. It would be convenient to blame one’s past work history, where one spent many years examining and rolling around in man’s inhumanity to man. Or maybe it is a product of my British-styled stiff upper lip up-bringing, no one will really know for sure. On the other hand, I am not the most ardent supporter of lengthy prison sentences or the death penalty as a solution to crime, for the primary reason is that I do believe that often the root cause of the people filling our jails are due to their circumstances at birth and/or their dysfunctional up-bringing. In other words they are victims of circumstance rather than genetic evil.

That all being said, a recent case in Chilliwack British Columbia has raised the bile in my throat and jangled my remaining faith with the sentencing and judicial system in this country, which is now being continually smeared by the politics of virtue signalling– no matter the human cost.

This particular recent case surrounds two foster parents and two foster children; an 11 year old and an 8 year old that were technically in the custody of the BC Ministry, but being housed and looked after by as it turns out, two sadistic adults. These foster parents were being paid $2000 a month, and had their own biological children in the house as well. The case details themselves are gruesome and have been played out by the media in many forums, always with the warning that we may not want to hear or see the evidence. Suffice to say, the children were tortured, beaten, restrained, forced to eat dog food, drink their urine and made to wear diapers–and it was all captured on 400 hours of video from in-house security cameras.

These parents (and I use the term very loosely) beat the children, with broom handles, a butt of an axe, and used zip ties and duct tape to bind and restrain them over many months. They even taught and encouraged the members of their biological family to do the same to the clearly un-wanted guests. The video often captures the foster parents laughing and joking while many of these elements of torture were going on, including the beatings and the kickings. The “mother” and the “father” were equally guilty, in fact it was the “mother” who for the last time slammed the child’s head into the floor, then waited an hour before she called 911 to get medical attention for the un-responsive child. The child died a short time later, weighing 63 lbs. at death, when a normal weight would have been 110 lbs.

Both parents have now pled guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault. In a joint submission, which mean both Crown and the defence side agree with the proposed sentence; they have asked for a 10 year sentence for manslaughter, and 6 years for aggravated assault, to be served “concurrently”. In other words, technically the pair will be eligible for parole in about 3 years.

So in this case that presiding Judge Peter R. Laprairie called an example of “severe physical and psychological abuse that was deliberate and protracted”; one where he called the parents “evil and inhumane”, and a case where the violence perpetrated on the child, eventually killed one of the foster children–all of the official courtroom participants feel that this is a judicial sentence. I was reminded of my own ugly case where two individuals tortured and killed a street sex worker over a period of 12 hours before throwing her in the Fraser River still alive. The case got dubbed in Surrey “The House of Horrors”. Both of the accused in that case in 2001 were convicted of manslaughter and given 18 years– and I was upset that considering the level of torture, that was not enough time in jail. The length of the sentence in this Chilliwack case in light of the similar but different circumstances, where the torture lasted for months and an 11 year old child was the victim, is absurd, disturbing and insulting. What level of Crown Counsel, the group who is representing the life of the child, felt that this was indeed a reasonable sentence?

To me there is nothing excusable or more horrific than the harm done to children. As author David Pelzer once wrote, “Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul”. How could anyone watch 16,000 video clips of abuse and nightmarish torture in this Chilliwack case and feel that 10 years was sufficient? These adult sociopaths also have their own children, and god knows what has happened to them over the years, and what kind of psychological trauma will follow them into adulthood. One can only hope that the violence they watched and participated in would not carry into their adulthood, but that would almost seem impossible.

Did I mention that the two foster kids are Indigenous and the foster parents are also Indigenous? Why would I mention that? It should not matter right? How could it be possible that this was about anything but the murder of a child? But wait, as it turns out this “progressive” NDP government never fails to stoop to the woke. In watching the media report and the subsequent statement by the Ministry I noticed that there was something amiss, something which seemed out of context. As I continued to watch the press conference, there standing behind the Minister, who was busy tap dancing around the clear and obvious negligence by her department, were several Indigenous leaders. Why were they there I wondered? Is it possible that the government was trying to turn this case of government neglect and a humans tragic gruesome death, into an Indigenous issue, one where they could score some political points? It seemed hard to believe.

This led to other thoughts. Has this had something with a publication ban being imposed? Has this had any bearing on the sentencing of these two?

That concern was answered early on, yes, the government was going to make this about the indigenous cause, and rather bizarrely link it to a death, where everyone involved was Indigenous. (The link to that conference is attached.)

Minister Mitzi Dean early in at the beginning of the conference, surrounded by Indigenous leaders who seem constantly available, started with the statement that the BC government is “committed to reconciliation…” . She spoke of the need to ameliorate the “harmful colonial practises” and to “end the epidemic” of mental health issues amongst the Indigenous, which of course were brought on by these “harmful colonial practises”.

So in this case of nightmarish horror, in this case of negligence on the part of the Ministry bordering on criminal, she feels that she should start her press conference talking about the need for “reconciliation”. Here was the BC Minister of Children and Family Development in a public forum, designed to answer to the fact that the Ministry never checked on these children for seven months, a completely inexcusable amount of time, and she was trying to cloud Ministerial neglect by the Indigenous reconciliation issue.

Predictably, she then went on to add how corrective “changes have been fully implemented” to make sure that this “tragedy” never happens again. Ms Dean, pointed out that she was a former social worker, and now admits that the “policies and procedures weren’t followed” in this case. Of course, she continually assured everyone in the audience that better practices are already being followed. Nobody was fired, and Ms. Dean clearly does not believe in that old school principal that the Minister is ultimately responsible for her department. People should have been fired. The Minister should step down, and there should be an inquest into the processes of this Chilliwack office and the government Ministry in general in dealing with child welfare issues.

When pressed on why the proper practises were not followed, Ms Dean adding insult to injury, chose to answer with a government non-response, repeatedly answering, “Well, this is a real tragedy and my deepest sympathies go out to the family and the community”.

You know as well as I that the liberal and left-leaning governments of this country are trying to promote and encourage and have financed the Indigenous taking control of, and having responsibility for their own child welfare system. By not identifying the victims or the suspected and now convicted parents, who are they protecting? Did the Indigenous heritage of the guilty parties play in the lenient sentencing? Was the lack of checking partly the result of this being an Indigenous foster family because it treads dangerously close to the political ground of Indigenous governance? In this file of massive incompetence, the governments clear intention was to bury it in the bureaucratic black hole that surrounds all family matters in this Province, and then blanket themselves with the need for reconciliation.

Since the 1980’s in this country the government has been granting greater autonomy to the Indigenous nations in terms of running their own child welfare systems. This also includes when there is a need to adopt, and all based on the necessity to ameliorate the “cultural genocide” that has been perpetrated by those “colonialists”. Currently, when a child is removed, and this is no insignificant step, the social workers must try and place the child with an extended family member, second choice being another Indigenous family, or foster parents that are Indigenous. The removal of a child is first and foremost to then insure that they are placed out of harms way. Logistically this is proving difficult considering the relative small size of some communities. The 60’s scoop and the removal of endangered children from the community was based on this primary reason, the care of the child, whether it was always applied equally or fairly can be argued. Logistically, in terms of adequate foster home placement, there may have been no other way. The fact that still over 50% of children in foster care are Indigenous shows that correcting this process or system is not going to be easy. There is also a right to ask the question. Is a child’s actual physical survival and well-being being placed after the need to fix those real or perceived colonial wrongs? Is the preservation of the culture and language now seen as a bigger priority than saving a child from abuse?

In this Chilliwack case, the politics of the Indigenous is being layered over the need to protect the welfare of the child. Everyone should be ashamed. People should lose their jobs over this, and the two psychopathic foster parents should be locked up for a considerable greater period of time to insure they are never around children again. As for the Minister of this NDP government who felt that scoring political points with the Indigenous is a greater talking point than a child’s life– you have blood on your hands. You probably weren’t a good social worker either. Stick your apologies.

As that child’s head hit the floor, as it had many times before, and his malnourished body remained lifeless, it is highly doubtful that at that time and moment this child’s last concern was about righting the colonial wrongs. He was not worried about “cultural genocide” he was in a losing battle for his life.

He therefore should be given a name, and a memorial to him should be erected in his honour, so that we remember how he died, and hopefully remind everyone what the true goal in child care is as always –to take care of the child.

An update: https://apple.news/AZ7mY7JNwQ1CVg2Z1Qmvupw

Photo courtesy of Pawsitive Comdir _N via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved.

Behind the Yellow Tape

Author: Pete Cross