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

Posted on 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 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 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 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 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 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.

“Where there are trees in Water”

Posted on by Pete Cross

Every couple of years I make a pilgrimage to the center of Canada, to visit family and just to take stock of the city and places where I grew up, where I went to school, and where I joined the RCMP. I am presently taking that 360 degree look around from the beating heart of what the Iroquois named from the phrase– “where there are trees in water”– the city hated or loved by the rest of Canada– Toronto. The Iroquois, by the way were simply referring to this area as a place where one would find weir nets in the lakes. Ontario or “kanadario” was also Iroquois named, meaning “sparkling water”. Clearly, the namers had a thing about the water in those times. If Canadians were now asked to describe this city, it is unlikely that the water (Lake Ontario) would be part of their definition, nor the first outstanding feature that would come to mind. You can’t really even see the water from the lakeshore because of the massive tower developments looking towards Toronto Island.

This is a city though, despite any preconceived notions, that one should be paying attention to; it is a bell weather of the problems and the dynamics of Canada. It is, in this country of hewers of wood and drawers of water, the financial and industrial epicentre for Canada. When they press the buttons here, whether we like to admit it or not, the rest of Canada has to jump; and when things fail here, the effects are felt throughout this country. It is where elections are decided, with an obvious slight bow to Quebec and its growing francophone autocracy. It is where the 6,372,000 people of this traffic engorged city live– the “6” in Toronto slang, that being a reference to the 6 large scale municipalities which were joined in 1998 as one which now form a discombobulated government of many voices, many opinions and little unanimity.

It is always changing, this place of my birth, the waves of immigration and population insuring constant change, constant growth and the need for ever increasing social services. The infrastructure has changed little, the streetcars still ply up and down Queen St, but the streetcars have doubled in size. Queen St. itself, is now an even greater hodgepodge of cafes, vintage clothing boutiques, vape shops all scattered amongst the boarded windows that could not survive Covid or gave up trying. Brick is the building material of choice in this city, and as the city ages, what looked new, now looks old, decaying bricks literally falling off buildings and now laying inert on the sidewalks.

The demographics and the growth of the ethnic neighbourhoods is both inspiring and worrisome. As of 2021, 57% of the population of the city now belongs to a visible minority group; when I worked here for the RCMP at Jarvis and Dundas, in the 1980’s, that figure was about 13.1%. There are lots of “littles” now: Little Italy, Little India, Little Jamaica, and Little Portugal, surrounded by Greektown, Koreatown, and Chinatown. So Yes, the city has changed, those neighbourhoods have grown in size and the infrastructure such as stores, and services, are now large enough to support their own specific neighbourhood. There is no need to intermingle, there is no need to leave your neighbourhood, which many champion as a good thing, but in many ways it is not. It is the Canadian mosaic, not the Canadian melting pot.

This puzzle of a city is aptly demonstrated by the current mayoral race in Toronto. Believe it or not, there are 102 people running to be mayor— have filed their nomination papers and paid the entry fee. All are for the most part, one issue candidates, and that issue usually a perfect reflection of the neighbourhood from which they have arisen. Even the top 4 or 5 are polling less than 10% in numbers. The current leader, by far, is a re-tread, Olivia Chow.

Ms Chow has been a politician, both civically and Federally for most of her life, and a standard bearer for the NDP. She was married to NDP Federal Leader Jack Layton who served as the Federal Opposition leader from 2003-2011 before he passed from cancer in 2011.

She has been around the city of Toronto and its political environs for many years. In 1991 she was elected to Toronto city council, then in 2006 was elected as a Federal MP. She came back to the city and ran for mayor of Toronto in 2014, but placed third. She ran again Federally in 2015 but was again unsuccessful in the riding of Spadina/Fort York. She was born in Hong Kong, raised lower middle class in Toronto, and attended Jarvis Collegiate and then the Ontario College of Art.

She is “woke” to be sure, and her issues have not changed much over the years; homelessness and public transit usually lead every Toronto list, and of course, looking after the ever growing downtrodden. She was known for her daily blissful bike ride to City hall, a very colourful bike, that she adorned with flowers. She at one time had to resign from the Toronto Police Services Board because during a riot at the Legislative Assembly she approached the police to change their tactics in quelling the riot. So now she is back, and leading the race for mayor.

The problem for Ms. Chow and other candidates who have been politicians in the last twenty years in this city, is that the city is going the wrong direction. More of the same, the same solutions, the same talking points simply are not working. There is confusion everywhere, confusion in the fixing of streets, confusion in the bylaws, confusion in the decaying neighbourhoods and their infrastructure. The politicians worry about plastic straws, but not about hundreds of thousands of vehicles idling in stale-mated traffic every day of the week. They worry and repeatedly talk about safe streets, while at the same time refusing to clean up those streets. I recently asked a friend why he never drives into the city from Mississauga? He sums up his discontent with “on the streets all you smell is piss and marihuana”.

Housing is un-affordable to the working middle and lower classes, and the struggling salaries are contributing to the growing disappearance of that tax paying middle class. The hotels, restaurants and bars are staffed by the only people who will take the jobs, the largely immigrant population, who are still struggling with English as their 2nd language, so still willing to do manual labour, and often thankful for the opportunity. Downtown, amongst the financial banking towers and the intersection of Yonge and Bloor, which were once strewn by Harry Rosen three piece suit wearing bankers; now sweat shirts, and sweat pants are the norm, the towers look empty, there is a tiredness on the face of the people shuffling along the street. There seems to be no energy left.

If one remains positive about this city it may be in the fact that those immigrants, those still willing to work and not overly concerned about “work-life balance” may pull it up by its boot straps, and reignite this once prosperous and dynamic area. But, you also have to be honest about those chances.

The city is claiming that Covid 19 placed it in a $933 million deficit. But putting aside the argument that everything can be blamed on Covid, Ernst and Young in a recent report in March 2023 says that covid aside, the city is grappling with a $46.5 billion in “financial pressures over the next decade” that will threaten the city’s “fiscal stability” and the “sustainability of its service levels”.

Of course, the only solution being offered up by the local politicians is that they get more money from the Federal and Provincial governments. No one seems to understand that a tax dollar is a tax dollar, regardless of who is paying it out. There certainly is no solution that involves cutting back on spending.

So what does this all have to do with policing? I firmly believe that police officers are both a mirror of society in general and they also serve as the canaries in the coal mine. They will see the unadulterated problems first, and they will be the last ones around when the things go wrong. The Toronto news is a reflection of all the cities of Canada, but it is bigger here, the numbers often overwhelming; “stabbing downtown”, “police seeking two suspect after man shot in Scarborough”, “one man wounded in stabbing in east-end Toronto”, “family dispute in Vaughan results in charges of attempted murder, kidnapping”,”Markham mosque attack”, and “three Toronto teens arrested for string of armed pharmacy robberies”. It is a fire hose of inflammatory and outrageous headlines every day.

Toronto is very close to being and feeling like an American city. They have always aspired to be New York north, but are the changing times and the seemingly overwhelming problems going to drown all the good intentions. New York north or more likely Detroit north?

The city for now is still functioning though, massive high rises are still being built, the cops are in evidence everywhere, directing traffic on Yonge St, or working overtime security for window washers cleaning high rises. There are visible levels of efficiency in terms of moving people through the subways, trains, or to and from the airport. Blood is still pumping through the now enlarged heart of the city, but whether it is enough to keep the extremities going remains to be seen.

I do hope that they make it, that despite the government, there is enough independent thought and entrepreneurial vigour in the new generations coming along that they can make it work. It is my hometown, but it is no longer my home,– but we need Toronto –Canada needs Toronto.

Photo courtesy of RebelXL- via Flickr Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Cops being killed and Cops killing

Posted on by Pete Cross

If we can all tear our eyes away from the ludicrous goings on in Surrey for a moment, which is looking more and more like a Monty Python sketch. The less than Honourable Mayor Brenda Locke now waiting for the City staff to review the Provincial report– and trying to find someone with a pen to sign the non-disclosure agreement (the Province is insisting the City sign off on seeing an un-redacted report).

She has moved on to other important matters such as re-naming “Scott Rd” (a major north south corridor in Surrey) to “Jatt Avenue”. Of course this is just a blatant ass-kissing of the South Asian community city voters, who have become a vital and necessary ally in the Surrey civic elections. Why Jatt? It is because the Jatt Sikh are the ethno-religious group who are one of the dominant communities in the Punjab and of course in this area of Surrey. The now to be forgotten Colonel Scott was the person who originally built the road and for whom it was obviously named. Forget history and contribution, there are new age political fish to fry.

Meanwhile in the rest of the country, people are, and should be concerned about the increase in police officers being killed in this country. Since September 2022 a total of nine officers have been killed, an exceedingly high number. It should be noted from the outset of this narrative that all but one of those calls, which led to their deaths, were in response to mental health related incidents, while only one involved an individual out on bail.

So when stories such as these finally make it to a public forum, the experts and the politicians rise up as one, pushing each other aside to get to the microphone, all expressing their outrage, their bundle of solutions readily available for all the problems in policing. The Liberals never wanting to offend their dedicated progressive constituents, but being hounded and chased by a lot of bad publicity, needed to act. So this time the focus was on the “catch and release” program which has been operating in the Canadian criminal courts for a very long time. Bill C-48 is a quickly constructed eight page bill that could have been written on a napkin. This bill will under certain circumstances create a “reverse onus” on the defendants, so that those who have violently re-offended now need to justify to the courts their need to be released. Prior to this bill, the onus was on the Crown to argue that based on their history they should be kept in jail to await trial. Reverse onus as a legal concept has been in place for a very long time but reserved for the more serious offences such as sexual assault, or homicide.

Sounds good right? The Canadian Police Association likes it, they are calling it a “common sense” piece of legislation, in fact a “transformative” piece of legislation. All of which makes me certain that the executive of that group are a long way from the reality of the courts and the actual barriers being faced by police and prosecutors on the ground. They even were part of a joint press release with Justice Minister David Lametti– read into that what you will.

There are some gaping holes in this legislation. First of all it the Act is worded in such a way, that it must be a second “violent offence committed with a weapon”within the last five years. So if you were involved in a violent offence with a gun and convicted six years ago, one would assume that this new law would not apply. The number of cases that this reverse onus will be applied will in essence be relatively minimal. And remember, this is only reversing the “onus” to prove you are safe to be released. There are a lot of judges in this country, who are empathetic to the “victim” and less leaning to the law and order types. So this is not mandatory– they could very well let them out anyway. Secondly, since 2018 in this country the Federal government and the Courts have been told to “prioritize” bail for the “marginalized community”. Do you know who is “over-represented” in the courts and the jails of this country? This will not apply to them.

When OPP Constable Greg Pierzchala was gunned down by Indigenous male Randall McKenzie, prior to this he had been released from his very violent record because of his Indigenous background. Justice Harrison Arell released McKenzie who had a lengthy history of violence prior to killing the Constable, but he decided he must release him. Canadian Press found the audio recording of the hearing wherein the Judge says, “First Nations people are greatly over-represented in the prison system, especially in pre-trial custody”. This is reverse logic, not reverse onus.

The academics have also risen from their slumber and are spouting a number of theories as to why this is happening. Professsor Tempitape Oriola, a professor of Criminology feels that the police have brought this on themselves, in some ways, because of who the police now “represent or embody”. He draws a line from because of what they represent thus making them targets. Rick Parent, a former 30 year police officer and now an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University, feels that maybe we should point to the “distrust in more racialized communities” and points to the fact that 21% of black people, and 22% of Indigenous people distrust the police. My guess is that 20% of those of European descent also mistrust the police.

Professor Piche of the University of Ottawa states that it is the “failure on the part of the police” and the panacea lies in bail reform. In his picture for the article he is wearing a toque which says “Build Communities not jails” which may be a bit of a hint as to where he starts his argument from.

Parts of what they say is true of course, but there is only one root cause and it is by far the greatest reason for police officers being killed, and that is mental health. This has always been the case. Nothing has changed in half a century.

By the way, this year is not a record. In 1962 there were 12 officers killed. At that time there were only 26,000 officers in all of Canada. There were 9 killed this year, but now there are 70,000 cops. So maybe it is just a matter of numbers.

The police officers that were killed then, and the ones that have been killed in the last number of months were “targeted”, “ambushed”, because someone in a state of mental breakdown can only call one group to come and be their victim. And the other troubling thing to consider that if a cop is targeted, there is little that can be done to prevent it. That is the hard and dark fact. As Professor Brown notes that what is happening is a “targeting of police officers because they are police officers”. In other words, if there is to be a motto to be remembered, for police officers it must be “there but for the grace of God go I”. All the training, the body cams, the issuing of high calibre rifles, and layers of body armour will not prevent or stop a police officer from going to the call and therefore run the risk of being gunned down. That is their job, that is what they do– and it will not stop a disturbed determined individual from killing them. Statistically, it is a rarity, but there is nothing that can be done in policing to stop this type of individual.

This was true in Moncton, this was true in Mayerthorpe and this was true in Portapique.

The roots of these mental breakdowns or what spurs a demented mind can be found in the homelessness, the drug addicted, and in the overwhelming failure of the mental health system. Those mental health issues and suicides have gone up dramatically since the pandemic, which may also be a causal link to this most recent increase in police killings. People forced into physical and mental lock-downs, loneliness, despair, and economic job loss may in fact be the precursors to mental breakdown. Domestic violence, divorce, child abandonment, and financial problems are often at the core of this societal breakdown— not the fact that they are out on bail. Then add fuel to these mental pressures with excessive alcohol, or continual drug use, and you have a potent mixture for mayhem. If you walk the cities of Toronto, Edmonton, or Vancouver you will pass by a number of persons who are close to that edge, they are just peering over into the darkness and futility.

The fact that the mental health issue is at the core, is further underlined if you examine when cops kill. You will see that in this country, cops killing civilians has also taken a significant turn.

In Canada this year 24 people have been killed by the police and over 1,000 in the U.S. Since 2000 in Canada, 143 people have been killed by the police. Two-thirds were by shootings. And in a recent study, somewhat predictably, B.C. police forces have a higher rate of killing. Three times higher than in Ontario, and 30% higher than 2nd ranked Alberta.

Now, I am not one to argue that in every case, the police did the right thing, that just wouldn’t make common sense, as there is a lot of evidence, especially in the U.S. of officers killing suspects when that option was not necessary. However, the vast majority of police incidents which lead to a deadly reaction would in fact be righteous killings; often the police officer actually waiting too long before he shoots the suspect, or not reacting quick enough to the circumstances.

More police are being killed while at the same time the police are also killing more people now. This too is primarily caused by the clash of police with mental health problems. But there may be a secondary issue also worth examining.

In this country we have chosen to arm and dress our police like Navy Seal team members. They arrive at calls as if fit to do battle. We have been forever trying to deny there is an obvious physical element to the job. Instead, we have chosen to arm all the officers with every tool to subdue. Pepper spray, batons, and tasers to name a few hanging off the officers belt. Training is now, to protect your personal space, engage from a distance, and if someone is not complying, escalate in your choice of tool.

When I first began policing it was extremely rare to hear of an officer involved shooting. It just didn’t seem to happen that much. The statistics, such as they are seem to bear this out.

In 1978 my first year in policing there were 4 police involved shootings in Canada.

1979- 4

1980 – 1

1984 – 1

1987 – 1

1988 – 7 This was the highest in the 1980’s.

Now skip ahead to 2008 which had 7 police involved killings

2009 – 5

2010 – 8

2011 – 11

2012 – 12

2013 -10

2014 – 24

2015 – 28

2016 – 14

2017- 35

2018 – 14

In any event, you get the picture. Things have clearly changed for the worse, an increase in population would be part of it, as would the increased number of cops on the street. But, how could one explain that in these current times, with the massive increase in non-lethal weapons, and the greater manpower, that the deaths by police have increased. In 1978, we had a .38 revolver, two speed-loaders, and some carried a plastic flashlight. Nothing else. Talking and physically controlling the individual were your only “alternate measures”. Nor was ERT a constant call out every time someone ran into a house. Before someone concludes that is all based on an increased in societal violence, just check out the statistics. That does not seem to be the case.

Something is amiss, and someone needs to explain it to me.

When a police officer is killed, we all feel it, and police officers feel it like an emotional hammered thud to their chest. When a suspect dies, a family somewhere also feels it. Maybe, it was a gun wielding murder suspect who was killed, but more than likely, it was a family member, one who the mental health system kept turning away, or did not have the capacity to help. If you want to lower the killings, then treatment for mental health issues is the clear and obvious key, the only real answer.

Right now though, nobody is winning and things need to change on both sides of the blue wall.

Photo courtesy of Moonjazz via Flickr Creative Commons –Some Rights Reserved

the Surrey Policing Circus

Posted on by Pete Cross

So by now you have heard the latest policing news consuming the Lower Mainland of B.C. The question: who is going to police the City of Surrey? After four years of transitioning to a new police service, the Surrey city council have decided that this would be a good time to go backwards. Re-trench, undo all the previous political decisions, fire the 390 officers that they already hired, and try to find more Mounties to go back to being policed by the men and women in Scarlet.

The “decision” was pushed to the NDP Government in Victoria to come up with a “decision”.

So now the “decision” was in.

British Columbia Minister Farnworth announced that they would recommend carrying on with the original transition to the newly formed Surrey Police Service; that in essence the Mounties are not in a position to properly re-take policing in Surrey or resume becoming what the government calls the “police of jurisdiction”. Also Mr. Farnworth and the NDP, in other words, the taxpayers of British Columbia, are willing to help defray the costs of the annual increase in costs, estimated at $30 million annually, for at least the next five years during the transition to the SPS.

Correspondingly, he also added that if the council under the guidance of uncomprehending Brenda Locke continues on her stated path of going back to the RCMP, or “reverse transitioning”, then there would be no monies forthcoming from the government. This would include the $72 million estimate that would need to be paid out to to get rid of the already hired SPS employees.

If the new money was not enough to convince Ms. Locke the government felt it necessary to add that if they choose to go back, then there would still be a number of conditions that they outlined that needed to be met. Those conditions on first viewing seem to place the Mounties in a very difficult position, especially the one where they are not allowed to steal from other detachments to reach the Surrey manpower goals.

It was a long awaited decision, one of the hardest decisions Minister Farnworth, the Attorney General for British Columbia says that he had ever undertaken, in trying to decide on who should patrol the streets of Surrey. He probably should have said the hardest “recommendation” he had to put forward, but maybe we shouldn’t pay attention to the semantics. One certainly should not be paying attention to either former Mayor McCallum, or the current Mayor Brenda Locke. Former Mayor McCallum just seems like an old crotchety senior citizen of South Surrey ranting over the picket fence. After the decision he was interviewed and spoke at great length how he never sees the Mounties at his grand kids soccer games. One would assume in his mind conclusively proving that the RCMP are not good members of the community.

Mayor Locke for her part accuses everyone of playing politics– except herself of course. She like McCallum seems at times unhinged, and we would also say with complete confidence, completely disconnected to the real conditions in the Surrey RCMP and in the RCMP in general. It may not be her fault because this blogger believes she has been continually misled by the information coming out of the RCMP.

It is sometimes forgotten that originally Ms. Locke was on the side of McCallum and ran with him. She then she had a falling out with the mayor, and overnight became revolutionized, and is now re-born as an ardent supporter of going back to the RCMP. One should not under estimate the fact that for Ms Locke this fight is personal. In fact she may be motivated solely by conquering McCallum–she is bitter, and the thought of McCallum winning the overall argument does not sit well, and may in fact be playing the biggest part in clouding her judgement.

In following the media, and the social media around this decision, seems to demonstrate that there a bit of fact checking needed.

There has been a lot of comment about the NDP, not wanting to offend too many voters and the nine parliamentary seats in the Surrey area, that what Farnworth and the NDP did in “recommending” was to effectively”kick the can down the street”. This is true, it was a recommendation not a decision; but that is the result of the sometimes vague language of the Police Act. In particular Section 2 which states that the Minister responsibilities include only that he “establish priorities, goals and objectives and goals for policing and law enforcement in British Columbia”. He can recommend, set out conditions, but not dictate, which is what they did.

Ms. Locke says the government has been disrespectful in that the Police Act states “categorically” that the choice of police is under the purview of the municipality”. Not quite true either. The Act says that the municipality of over 5,000 people must “provide police and law enforcement in accordance with this Act” (Section 3). Again the Act language is somewhat vague on this, but then again Ms. Locke has developed a recent habit of misleading statements.

There are large portions of the report redacted, which for the life of me on reading all that was provided does raise the question as to what possibly could be so sensitive that the public is not allowed to see it —especially in the context of this narrative. I have been told that Ms. Locke points to this redaction as a government cover-up, but the fact of the matter is that all the redactions were done or requested by the RCMP.

You will remember that all the parties; the RCMP, the Surrey City Council and the Surrey Police Service all provided reports/information for the Provincial government to consider. They had to be asked twice, because the first time they didn’t answer all the questions. In fact back in December they called the City report as having “contained inconsistencies, lacked supporting data and evidence”.

The City report now provided estimates to re-take policing in the city that they would only have to re-up 161 members (I am not convinced of that number and neither was the government) and that they were going to do this by three methods: recruiting back from the SPS; getting more officers from Depot (which would negate other detachment needs);,and by pulling members from other regions of BC (page 24). They even suggested that they could transfer members into the Surrey detachment for 6 months and if that still was not sufficient could resort to calling members in on overtime to fill shifts.

The government saw this as problematic. How could an agency that is 1525 (hard/soft vacancies) officers short in the Province begin to take further members from other locations they asked? Remember that this government just gave an additional $230 million to try and support the rural areas of the Province because of a lack of staffing. The government also quoted the 2019 Public Safety Canada report which stated: “demand for officers…outstrips the RCMP’s capacity to recruit and train” and “that under staffing is effecting the health and welfare of their members”.

They go on to say that Federal policing has been eroded to meet those contract demands and stated the stats that since 2010 show that contract officers increased by 17% while Federal officers decreased by 30%. They concluded by saying that they had significant concerns regarding sustainability of the program and regular member production levels.

What the most interesting take-away from all of this, it is that the RCMP has finally had to reveal its staffing inadequacy that has been in existence for probably 25 years. Every Mountie that has worked in the lower mainland for the last few decades has heard the term “do more with less” so much so that it became a standing joke at every annual assessment of spending priorities. Now the shortages have become acute, exacerbated by demographics, covid, a lack of recruitment, and a complete lack of foresight by the upper management of the RCMP and the governments of the day. The difference now is they have had to come clean with the staffing shortage numbers. They have had to show how they were going to cover off these shortages and when examined, in essence, they were going to resort to their time held tradition of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Now the government has called them on it.

The 20th century centralized structure of the RCMP is now making people even question the “sustainability of contract policing”. This was most recently stated by the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act, that was completed by this same BC Provincial government and released last year. It called for the re-establishment of a Provincial force, to get rid of the Mounties all together.

People need to understand and accept that the RCMP is not a stable organization right now. This is not about individual officers this is about an organization.

The RCMP is being buffeted by the winds of needed change. The inquiry at Portapique, just the most recent to say what has been said by other inquiries and other reports that came before it. The City of Surrey is a large municipality that is growing at 1,000 to 1500 people per month. It clearly needs its own dedicated police force with local control, that can act and re-act in a timely fashion. Ms. Locke, for whatever reason, is ignoring the obvious.

As a former long-standing RCMP officer it saddens me that the organization has proven that it can not adapt to big city policing, but it is what it is. There is also the theory that Ottawa once when pressed, will admit that it is really wanting to be a Federal level only Force. This is a difficult country to be all things to all people, to be a single police entity for all forms of investigational need, a massive undertaking in any circumstance. Currently the RCMP is failing miserably on the Federal side as well, and a re-structuring from the contract Provinces would go a long way in boosting up the Federal side. Whether true or not, only time will tell.

There is a long history of RCMP ineptitude in Ottawa, most of it born out of government bloat and bureaucratic aggrandizement. This is a police service which became too enamoured with themselves, enamoured with promotion and empire building, and to survive has traded in political favours, all to the detriment of the basic organizational and contractual needs. This is an Ottawa problem not a problem of individual police officers.

It is indeed ironic, that while all this mayhem and political grand-standing is going on and circling the RCMP’s largest detachment in Canada– the acting RCMP Commissioner is in England, presenting a horse and a ceremonial sword to King Charles. They just don’t get it. Similar to Trudeau in New York to talk about women’s rights and pose with Hollywood celebrity Hugh Jackman “Wolverine”, all while Ottawa is under a massive general strike.

So my advice to Ms. Locke, swallow your political pride, you are in essence surrounded on all sides, there is no way out for the RCMP; they are trapped in a system, one that will simply not allow them to fulfill their present mandate. Now not only the Surrey taxpayers are going to pay the price for these politicians, now everyone in the Province will be paying for these shenanigans. As long as this goes on there is further indirect damage being done in terms of operational policing. Morale is at an all time low on both sides, there is continuing in-fighting between the SPS members and the RCMP, some of it quite personal, continuity in files is being damaged, and the image of Surrey and its council is being tarnished with every appearance at a podium. While they decide who has the authority to go ahead, the decision is now stuck, resting somewhere in the ether, nestled between vague pages of the Police Act. The government report now estimates, even if they decide to carry on with the Surrey Police Service, another three years will be needed. A total of seven years for a transition?

Meanwhile, Brenda and Doug are politically arm-wrestling to see who will eventually be allowed to drive the clown car.

Photo Courtesy of David Blackwell vis Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

So many stories…

Posted on by Pete Cross

For me it is admittedly rare, but in the last couple of weeks I have been struggling with finding a topic on which to write. I have always wondered when I started this blog whether there would come a time when one would literally run out of stories or fall down the well of writer’s bloc. Would every aspect of the policing and the judicial world be written about? Was it possible to continue to write something original?

I guess I shouldn’t worry. It has been about six years now, and the stories just keep on coming. My problem this week was in not being able to choose from the multiple stories which garner headlines in this rather strange time we are living in.

The writing is often the easy part; the time consuming part is the research, the reading, the constant need to update, refresh, or follow up. You go down a lot of rabbit holes, often emerging no better off, or even more confused.

As an example, I spent two hours watching the hearings of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Interference, and the much anticipated appearance of Katie Telford, the Chief of Staff for the Prime Minister; a practised political operative whose very job is to to mitigate any political backlash for everything coming out of the government. She is part of the cabal. Part of the inner circle. And surprise surprise, she said nothing.

Aided by the ever smiling chair of the Committee, Liberal MP Bardish Chaggar, who spent her time trying to make sure Ms Telford was never ill at ease by any off-side questions– such as was the Prime Minister “briefed” on the Chinese efforts to influence the 11 ridings in the 2019 and 2021 elections? Ms. Telford in a clearly practised explanation said that she could not discuss what the PM has been briefed on or when he was briefed on it– on the basis of national security. She questioned the accuracy of the Globe and Mail reporting and the documents that were leaked to them which showed that the PM would have been briefed back in January; but she couldn’t and wouldn’t say what was inaccurate about the report– again National security. Suffice to say, this continuing lack of transparency in this government and by all governments in general in this country has clearly reached epidemic proportions.

Moving on to the next story.

The Federal Public Service is on strike as of this writing, the biggest question may be if and when anybody will notice. Amongst the union wish list are such items as “unconscious bias training” which is needed to “root out latent racism within the public service.” They would also like five days off a year for “traditional indigenous practices”, I’m hoping that this would only apply if you are Indigenous. What the Catholics or Protestants are demanding is unknown. They would also like more time given to attend conferences and the like; because there is no such thing as an unworthy conference to a government worker. Furthermore if they choose to work past 4 pm they would like a shift premium. The nirvana in this country is clearly doing the work of the government. Of course, most of these demands are fodder, material that can be discarded should they be offered another percentage increase in a pay raise. Isn’t it always about the money?

We also learned recently from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that 12 former MP’s accessed about $90K in payments to help them “transition” for “life outside the public office”. It is a $15K benefit available to all MP’s. It was claimed in one instance they reported to attend a conference with the self-help guru Deepak Chopra. However, the most egregious example would seem to fall to now Victoria MP Murray Rankin who represented the NDP in Ottawa for seven years. He who has law degrees from the University of Toronto and Harvard felt it necessary to expense $15K to attend the Rotman school of management in 2019. This was in the same year that he was appointed to chair the Federal National Security and Intelligence Review Committee, which I am sure also paid a decent salary. But Mr. Rankin is a moving target, and he has once again “transitioned”. This time Rankin has now become a BC Cabinet Minister responsible for Indigenous Relations.

In other news. It is not every week that along comes a story which pushes the Indigenous funding to page 2, but it happened recently. The previously mentioned Rankin re-appeared in the latest indigenous monies being handed out– which was the announcement of the settlement of the Treaty 8 “Treaty Land Entitlements” claim. The basis of this claim is that they were not properly compensated for the land back in 1899 and now they should be given more, and they should be getting monies from the development of those lands. The biggest development in the area being the Site C Peace River power project by B.C. Hydro.

These five nations have a total combined population of about 2,076 members–they were just awarded $800 million as a result of this settlement, in addition to 110,000 more acres of land. Using rough math thats $385,356 per person. The ever spinning government said that “…its not free money…its a bill that’s gone unpaid”.

As an aside, the Blueberry First Nation, one of the five in line for the land settlement, with their 524 registered members; in October 2021 were also granted by the BC government $65 million for “land restoration, wildlife stewardship, and cultural and capacity investments”.

Then along comes the Volkswagon company story knocking the indigenous from the summit of Federal government largesse. It has now been reported that VW have been given $13 billion in subsidies to create 3,000 jobs in St. Thomas Ontario. To be fair this is over a10 year span.

Using the same rudimentary math, that amounts to $4.3 million per job. Canada was bidding against the Americans and it appears that they felt that they needed to win this bidding battle, the liberals needed some good eco news, because this factory is to build the electric cars. The only surprise may be the fact that Industry Minister Francis-Philippe Champagne couldn’t get it built in Quebec. And if you think that poor VW, who made $30 billion or so in profits last year, needs the financial help, VW who also owns Porsche and Audi, is projecting to spend $193 billion by 2027 on future production.

One has to wonder about the behind the scenes negotiations, the promises and favours being given out to get to the pot of gold, and the level of oversight that will need to be employed. These two agreements were all negotiated behind the scenes, out of view of the public, in fact the government had to be pressured into eventually even admitting the subsidies to VW. This is a government who couldn’t keep track of fraudulent CERB cheques who is doling out billions of dollars to a relative few beneficiaries and they are doing it behind a screen.

There was a good news story. The Vancouver Police Department finally moved in and began taking down the encampments on Hastings Street. This time they finally figured out that they maybe they needed to attend for more than one day– to stop others from moving back. About 600 tents have been taken down to date. Of course this is B.C. so media headlines included 700 academics saying that moving the encampments was not the right way to go, there argument being that it should not be done until housing, psychiatric care and drug counselling was all provided. They didn’t really talk about the millions of dollars already spent each and every year which has seemingly had no effect. The ivory tower is alive and well.

Pierre Poilievre marched in and told the academics to go to hell and continued to call the downtown east side a “hell on earth”. As a resident of this fair city and someone who walks and drives through the downtown war zone on a daily basis, before deciding who is right in the argument the only evidence you need is just to take a look.

In another recent VPD story, which I had to read twice, not quite believing it the first time, concerns the Vancouver PD’s new policy on “handcuffing”.

Let me quote: “factors officers should consider prior to applying handcuffs include a persons age, disabilities, their medical condition, injuries, their size, their ethnicity, or whether they are part of other equity deserving groups”. It also states that “a police officer cannot view handcuffing someone who is under arrest, detained, or apprehended as a routine action” and from now on you “can not rely on administrative direction or order issued by the VPD, or any officer or supervisor within it to protect the member from legal responsibility”. This translates to you are on your own kids, be careful who you handcuff.

Now, it has been obvious for a number of years that the VPD is in many ways a genuine reflection of the very “woke” Vancouver. Chief Palmer and the rest of upper management and the Vancouver Police Board, who came up with this new policy, are always tripping over themselves to appear “progressive”,(Remember Bella Bella?) whether it be kowtowing to the LGBTQ groups, or painting their police cars with the latest indigenous logos. This latest example however is beyond reason.

The Police Board includes the current mayor and the chief of police, along with seven others who all seem to be reasonable individuals with the required “diverse” backgrounds. So how is it that they decided that “ethnicity” should be voiced as a determining factor in terms of handcuffing? When asked where this change in policy originated, these officials point to two incidents in the last couple of years. The handcuffing of the elderly indigenous male and his grand daughter outside the bank, while being investigated for possible fraud back in 2020. They also point to the detention of Chief Justice Romilly who was mistaken as a suspect in an assault while walking through Stanley Park (he only loosely fit the description)– Justice Romilly is black. For the record, the indigenous family has been compensated and Chief Romilly also recently reached a settlement with the VPD.

So because of these two incidents, out of hundreds of arrests in the last few years, hundreds having been handcuffed with no issue– because these two cases involved an elderly “indigenous male”, and a “black” male, we now have put attending officers in the position of having to articulate and explain the need to arrest and handcuff; and that part of the explanation needs to include that they took into consideration the suspects colour of skin.

It is politics, pure progressive politics, nothing more, and it is ridiculous, just as ridiculous as the “defund the police” movement. Another example of the public not being able to tell the police from the politicians. For day to day police operations common sense will still need to prevail in terms of handcuffing, but what they have opened up is a whole can of future complaints and lawsuits against police officers for not taking their “ethnicity” or their position in society into account.

I could find no response from the union for the Vancouver Police Department. Either they feel no need to defend their members or they are scared to speak out in fear of antagonizing these same very vocal minorities. Chief Palmer I have been told, has historically enjoyed pretty good support from his officers, but signing off on this policy and his continuing need to be one with the politicians makes one wonder how the membership could continue to support him.

As a final aside. Recently resigned Premier of B.C. John Horgan. You remember him? The Premier who with his party are the flag bearers for environmental concerns, supported anti-pipeline protestors and continue to lead the charge for green energy. He has now taken a new job. He is now on the Board for Elk Valley Resources a spinoff of Teck Resources Ltd–a coal-producing business. Ethics and principles are clearly very flexible commodities.

See, I told you…too many stories…not enough time.

Photo courtesy of Jon S via Flickr Creative Commons – Some rights reserved