200 Anomalies

Posted on by Pete Cross

I have never been a conspiracy theorist. Never. I find most theories absolutely ridiculous, not to mention logistically impossible; and all require an unfathomable level of cooperation and silence. However, there is one set of circumstances which is now stretching my ability to not think something is afoot– to the point that I am beginning to wonder if there is a concerted effort, perpetrated by a relatively large group, to conceal a major truth and preserve an accepted narrative.

I am speaking of the Tk’emlups te Secwepema First Nation in Kamloops who in May of this year passed their third anniversary in the “investigation” of what they had portrayed as a massive burial site of Indigenous children; innocent child victims of the residential school system, whose deaths are all part of a master planned “genocide” of their culture and beliefs. It was a horrendous pronouncement. Over the past three years the Indigenous and their loyal proponents have tempered down their initial statements and their claims of “mass graves”. But it was those statements which caused Trudeau to take a knee, lowered the flags to half-mast for 161 days and sent the media into daily paroxysmal outraged headlines. The headlines completely designed to ignite “colonial” guilt. All the governments of Canada began stepping over each other in efforts to apologize and began bringing in policies to assuage that projected guilt. Everyone demanded a making of amends and our governments brought forward billions in funds in an effort to soothe those gaping wounds of what they declared as being the result of systemic racism.

The story and the outrage began somewhat innocently, with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the grounds around the residential school in Kamloops, all part of a study by Dr. Sarah Beaulieu. The Dr. through her survey, then publicly identified 215 “anomalies” below the earth’s surface. The Kamloops band and the media enjoined everyone to believe that these “anomalies” could only be the graves of tortured, mis-treated and abused defenceless children at the hands primarily of the Catholic Church. The story echoed world wide. There were even comparisons to the Holocaust.

Three years later, most reasonable voices have walked back the language. However, there are those that hold true to the original narrative. People such as Grand Chief Stewart Phillip still portray the history of the residential schools as “deeply disturbing” and that it was all a “horrible chapter in the racist history of Canada”, and that the schools were a “brutal tool of genocide”. The Kamloops Chief Rosanne Casimir is no less inflammatory in her statements and states that anyone disagreeing or doubting some of the historical “facts” she says is merely evidence of the “systemic racism and white supremacy as foundational to Canada as the very Federal laws that ripped our children away from their families.”

The conclusive evidence of this “genocide” was believed to be in easy reach, it was just below their feet in those unmarked “graves”. So how has the evidence gathering been going you might ask after three long years. How much progress has been made in the recovery of those remains? I am being somewhat facetious, as everyone knows who follows this story– not one “grave” has been exhumed in over three years. To date the Band has spent $8 million (they will not outline or detail how that money has been spent) but clearly it has not been spent on trying to recover the physical remains– which again, are the central pieces of verifiable evidence of their case, and the single irrefutable forensic piece of the puzzle.

So what are they doing? How is the obvious first step in this type of investigation been ignored? That question is not really being answered. The Chief of course assures us that the people involved in the “investigation” are doing a “very credible job” and that “the investigation continues to be carried out in compliance with Secwepema laws, legal traditions, world views, values and protocols” and that they “…are deep in the investigative work”. She insists that it is all being done with a “multi-disciplinary” approach; using archival and documentary research and analysis, “truth telling with KIRS survivors… archaelogical and anthropological surveys, …potential DNA and other forensic methods”.

That all sounds quite sophisticated although I am at a loss to understand “world views, values and protocols” but in the end, the results of their efforts to date are still unexposed, or at least have not been made public.

Meanwhile, over these past years, a contrarian narrative is beginning to mount and some experts have become suspicious of the Indigenous claims. A number of qualified and esteemed scientists and academics are starting to press forward and their investigations are revealing some interesting albeit controversial opinions. They are being ridiculed, branded heretics and racists, for even suggesting a different story. Although simply calling people names rather that attack the findings seems too easy, it seems lazy.

Some of these counter narratives and alternate findings do warrant further examination. Even at the risk of being branded a dangerous dissenter. For instance, we have now learned that at this burial site, in 1924, a septic field was built for the school, which consisted of 2000′ of trenches, 3′ deep, lined with clay tiles and running in an east to west direction. The GPR profile of the trenches would present a similar profile to the detected anomalies, which in essence is measuring disturbances in the earth patterns. (It should also be noted that Dr. Beaulieu has not publicly produced her detailed report on the “soil disturbances”)

We have also learned that Dr. George Nicholas a distinguished professor from Simon Fraser University Indigenous Archaeology Program between 1991 to 2005; in conjunction with the Band, conducted a study of the area which in essence found little of particular interest. One “alleged juvenile tooth” which was found was later proven to be not a human tooth at all. In light of this program, the list of 215 anomalies had to be reduced down to 200; because they have now determined that 15 of those sightings were actually shovel marks from that previous study.

The most extensive detrimental evidence which has now come forward comes in the highly controversial book “Grave Error”. The book has been reviewed and reported in the Dorchester Review. (The Mayor of Quesnel was stripped of his budget, and barred from Committees because of his very distribution of the book –because of a complaint by the Lhtako Dene leadership).

The authors of the book gathered data from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; the Library and Archives Canada; and the B.C. Archives Genealogy resources, for the period 1915 to 1964. In examining this data they found that 51 children were documented to have died during this period of time. They were able to find accounts for 49 of the 51. The cause of death was found in 35 of those cases. Seventeen had died in hospital, 8 had died on their own reserve from accidents or illness, 4 were subject of autopsies, and 7 were subject of Coroners inquests. Twenty- four were determined to have been buried on the Indian reserve cemetery and 4 on the Kamloops Reserve cemetery. This latter is the old community cemetery on the the other side of the Reserve near St Josephs church. Whether one accepts all, or any part of these numbers, one would have at least to concede that the findings do suggest that there was no ongoing effort of concealment or a hiding of these particular children’s deaths.

In addition in 1935 the Department of Indian Affairs set out procedures for the handling of deaths of students at residential schools. Upon any death there was to be an Agent present on an inquiring committee which included a doctor, and the principal of the school and that at one time the site would have had rudimentary grave markers that likely just disappeared over time. It is also now believed that the site might also contain priests and nuns who worked at the school.

So where does this leave us? When questioned about any excavation of the site in March of 2024, the Kamloops Chief will only say that it would be a “sensitive step”, and that they are still working on the “oral tellings”. Apparently they are still content to listen to decades old recounts of the things that happened at the school, stories which under normal circumstances have a tendency to to distortion, augmentation, or inaccuracy. All the while the only true indisputable evidence represented by the bodies lay beneath their feet.

Depending on how one measures the dollars being spent, this is also proving to be a very expensive “investigation”. The Band states that they have now spent $7.9 million on the investigation, but if you include periphery expenses, there is the $3.1 million for the Student Death Registry, and a total of $238.8 million for the Residential School Missing Childrens Community Support Fund, which expires in 2025.

In all fairness, there would seem to be little doubt that the schools were in fact set up to assimilate the Indigenous culture; however there is mounting evidence that this was not a conscious effort to eradicate cultures and customs. And lets face it the Catholic Church, has come under heavy scrutiny in the last number of years for the behaviours inside the Church and under the cover of religion. However, the residential schools as cultural genocide, as the Indigenous claim, seems very much open to debate. However, to date, no debate is to be allowed. No accountability for the findings and the monies being spent are being asked for or demanded.

So is this an investigation or is it a story? The popular and current narrative is definitely needed by the Indigenous to underline and stir the flames of a move to greater political power and financial independence. Is it possible that to maintain the story and its credibility that there has been a conscious decision not to excavate for fear that it would damage the story that lies at the heart of their claims? We will never know unless there is some level of accountability, or someone on the inside deems to come forward. Is it possible that no excavation may ever be done, as has already been proposed, that it simply become a memorial site? If that happens, you can be assured that this was never an investigation, nor was it ever intended to be one– that this was just a story, in fact it may have even been a fable.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Commons and David Stanley – Some Rights Reserved

Another change in Seasons…

Posted on by Pete Cross

As we head into Fall and wind down from summer, it inevitably seems to be a time of imposed reflection. Fall traditionally signals an ending, a time of maturity and incipient decline. This Fall though there are some unusual stirrings in the political winds of Canada and to a certain extent around the world. It could prove to be a welcome breeze, especially for any person involved in policing or involved in the legal system.

Some pundits including Time magazine have called 2024 the “year of elections” . The results in many countries seem to reflect a growing conservatism amongst the democratic countries, a swing away from the socialist progressive agenda. This is fuelled in large part by the realization that there is in fact a defined need for the police, that there is room in a democratic society for enforcement of the existing laws. There is also a desire to remove the politics out of the governmental system and oversight of the legal arms of society. Unlike years past, this time, especially in Canada, the move to a more conservative ideology may be more long lasting.

Now, before those positioned on the far right of the spectrum get too excited, a possible swing to the right is in essence, in Canada, merely a move to the centre. It only seems drastic and is being portrayed as momentous merely because of the fact that the pendulum was so far left for so many years. That being said I do believe that the vast majority of Canadians would like to return to some sort of common sense middle ground. This shifting in sentiment is often hard to discern or measure, often disguised by the fact that they are such small incremental steps. However, it is becoming much clearer that the issue of law and order has once again risen to the top.

I live in Vancouver British Columbia, the wellspring of inanity, where we learn of another grotesque criminal act on a daily basis, for the most part being instigated by the homeless, the mentally disturbed and the drug addicted. The latest was another stabbing, in broad daylight and with no motive. One male stabbed to death, another male knifed and actually had his hand severed from his body. It was perpetrated by an individual who could be the poster child of the wrong headedness of our court system, another too familiar example of where the combination of mental health and criminality collides forcefully and is played out on public streets in broad daylight. All while citizens look on or stop to record it on their phones. This latest suspect male had over 60 encounters with the police, was on probation, and had a history of assault and assault causing bodily harm. His current probation conditions was termed as being “soft”.

The story fomented the usual media hype, the Mayor coming out quickly to assure everyone that this is a “safe city” –when those of us that live amongst the daily visions of unbridled mental illness and drug abuse clearly know better. The Vancouver City Police Chief Adam Palmer when sharing the podium, seemed exasperated and in his statement gave a not so subtle hint that the suspect should not have been out on the streets. The media as usual called for instant solutions to undo the years of policy mistakes, the biggest mistake being the closing of the local psychiatric hospital “Riverview” in 2012.

In the Vancouver and British Columbia political establishment the leaders are clearly taking note of the growing public discontent and it is now looming as the single most important political election issue. Along with this is that in British Columbia there has been a dramatic up-ending of the three political parties in the Province. The Liberal Party (who re-branded themselves the B.C United), they, who were the power brokers for many years in this Province, have simply given up; they have literally withdrawn from the next Provincial election scheduled for November 2024. They have surrendered the proverbial ghost and have freed their candidates to wander away into obscurity or go join the Conservative party. This leaves it a two party race, which is polling now as a neck and neck battle between the governing NDP and the Conservatives.

The upcoming election, if nothing else, will allow the voters to distinguish between two distinct policy groups, the socialists or the conservatives, and should therefore provide a more accurate glimpse of the mood of the people. The Conservatives are predictably running on a platform of law and order and a greater move to private enterprise. They are in essence saying that they want the government to get out of the way. The NDP whose party base are traditionally the victimized and marginalized groups (you pick the group), the unions, and any and all members of the “learned” left. These “progressives” have the added advantage of massive support from the current media establishment, the Indigenous, government workers and the academic institutions. The NDP are remaining true to their ideology and are sticking with policies of all people being part of, by necessity, a fulsome government oversight apparatus. It has been a long time since there has been such a clear choice for the people going to the ballot box and currently it seems be an even battle.

It is always fun at election time to watch all the candidates feel bolstered and sharing their insights on all of the evident problems and the clear solutions that lay ahead. Solutions which they did not see while in power but have now attained a greater vision when in sight of a ballot box. What is equally clear is that it is always someone else’s fault.

When talking about crime and rampant lawless behaviour, the Provincial NDP who have been in power for the last five years in British Columbia (the California of Canada for all you Canadians who live in the east) quickly point to the Federal Liberals as the problem. And to be fair, the Feds are the governing body when it comes to the Criminal Code. The offended Feds in turn point back at the Provinces because they are in charge of Health Care and the current sitting Judiciary. The Provincial leaders then rebound and point the accusing finger downward to the cities as they are responsible for enforcement. Three levels of government, all with no defined action plan in terms of the daily carnage on the streets and apparently unable to find any solutions while in power, now telling everyone they now know the way.

As we in the West look eastward, Alberta has always been Conservative and the Prairies are very similar. Doug Ford in Ontario is now trying to get a Conservative election victory prior to any Federal Election. Newfoundland is the only true vestige left of Federal Liberal supporters.

The Federal NDP and their illustrious shrill leader Jagmeet Singh dramatically announced that he is “ripping up” his prop-up agreement with the Federal Liberals; while at the same time vowing not to be rushed into any confidence vote. It would seem that he has finally realized that the Liberals are circling the drain and he either goes down with them, or finally leaves the safety of the Liberal cocoon for the less than safe seats of his own party. His ratings are below Trudeau but he is hoping his chances will improve with a continuous socialist rhetoric of corporate greed. He is hoping that someone out there actually agrees with him, but his chances of disappearing altogether is growing. The policing fraternity are hoping that the NDP policies disappear with him.

Now Trudeau himself is another story. His actions to date only raise questions for me. As he reads the latest polls and gathers his troops in Nanaimo this week, is he being driven by pure ego? Does he think he can spend his way to a rise in the polls and another minority government? His strategy for a possible re-election is singular. He will continue to try and and will have to make Polievre turn into Trump.

Polievre for his part, will continue to try and avoid any major guffaws and keep his newly coiffed hair and refined look in place. He has to walk a fine line, because he certainly is not going to get any votes from the public service or those that depend on government contracts. The same foes of the BC Conservatives are the same foes for the Federal Conservatives. Let’s face it, what are the chances that members of the CBC vote for him?

Of course there is not a strong enough wind to blow all the usual problems off the headlines and the teleprompters of our television talking heads. In terms of specific policing issues, in the next few months the Surrey RCMP and the Surrey Police Service will continue to dominate the local BC headlines with the snail like place of getting officers on the ground and the equally slow moving RCMP in getting their officers out. The Indigenous will continue to dominate headlines with further demands and true to form, just recently tore up their latest signed agreements for a natural gas pipeline with TC Energy. There is little doubt that the RCMP will once again be manning the barricades in northern B.C.

Back east I have a growing interest in the Bill Majcher case, charged as he is with foreign interference and there are some interesting parallels to the Cameron Ortis case. There is a good chance that CSIS and the RCMP INSET (Integrated National Security Teams) may look bad on this one as they continue to struggle to be a meaningful service amongst the Five Eyes. So we need to keep our own eyes on that one. Their is evidence now coming forward that Majcher was throughout several periods of time , actually working for CSIS.

In a more general sense, the Mounties in Ottawa will continue to find themselves in an environment of increasing public suspicion. They seem to be floundering in terms of leadership and in finding their true reason(s) for being. The larger overall problems have been years in the making and it will be years in the undoing. They will however, continue to do what they still do best. They will apologize somewhere. The most recent was in Nova Scotia where they apologized to the African Nova Scotians for “historic” use of street checks.

There will be the usual public government pronouncements, the Federal government employees will continue to protest having to go back to work 3 days a week and will come up with any inane excuse they can find. Housing prices will stay the same, inflation will continue to hover around 3% and mortgage rates will have little effect on the supplies of housing. The media will continue to pump us full of doomsday proclamations; headlines about droughts, floods, fires, heat, cold, or anything they decide is “record breaking”. Our traditional news sources will continue to be decimated and their managers will continue to replace long time journalists with persons who are quick on the keys to Instagram, and Substack. Ukraine seems to be in military limbo and Israel seems to heading into the same horrendous stalemate in Gaza.

However, life will go on. Get ready, get your thoughts in order and be a little hopeful, as it is never as bad as it seems. Its only an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Photo courtesy of Jeannine St- Amour via Flickr Commons – Some Rights reserved

Ronald MacDonald wants to go to court more…

Posted on by Pete Cross

Of course the title of this blog is not referring to that icon of our childhood, the “… Happy Hamburger Clown” of Golden Arches fame; although he has had his legal issues too (he was sued civilly for promoting child obesity.) No, this is in reference to Ron MacDonald, the current head of the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) for the Province of British Columbia. This is the group, with an annual budget of about $10 million, that is mandated to “conduct investigations into police-related incidents resulting in death or serious harm to determine whether any officer may have committed an offence”. There is a general consensus growing that the group is in trouble, it is not fulfilling it’s mandate, in fact many say they are failing and failing miserably. Mr. MacDonald himself has recently been speaking out on his own frustrations.

The police could not and should not investigate themselves was the repeated slogan coming from those of the political left of centre a number of years ago. It stirred the politicians to act in September of 2012. Like most political policy, it was the result of a political reaction to a rather immature and naive understanding of police wrongdoing. The theme had been pushed forward by a vocal minority, which in turn was then given an audience by the Davies and Braidwood inquiries, which looked into the deaths of Frank Paul and Robert Dziekanski respectively.

Paul was a 48 year old Mi’kmaq who Vancouver Police officers tried to book into the “drunk” tank, but they were turned away when the on duty Sgt said that he had only just released Mr. Paul, two hours before from cells and he wasn’t going to book him again after such a short period of time. So the officers took Paul away and returned him to the downtown alley. He was clearly still intoxicated and he subsequently died of exposure and hypothermia in the alley. However, after a total of five Crown reviews of the case, all concluded that “charges were not warranted” against the Vancouver City officers involved.

Dziekanski was a more widely reported incident where police responded to a disturbance in the Vancouver Airport, when Dziekanski a Polish immigrant who had just arrived, was wandering disoriented around the terminal and then began causing a ruckus. Four officers attended and tasered him saying they felt threatened. Dziekanski died of heart failure. The four officers believed they were both justified in their actions and within the limits of their training. Some of the officers were charged, but not for the death, but for perjuring themselves during the Braidwood inquiry. Judge Braidwood at the inquiry conclusion said that the officers “didn’t intend to cause his death”.

So what prompted the birth of the IIO was a political demand, which used as it primary evidence two cases– both of which showed there was no wrong-doing on the part of the police.

Irony aside, the first IIO chief was Richard Rosenthal, who left the job early to return to the world of academia and probably did not leave the best impression. He was then succeeded by Mr. MacDonald in 2017. MacDonald came from the legal world, he was a defence counsel for 6 years, and then a Prosecutor for 17 years and had a distinguished record. All of which makes his recent comments a little more perplexing.

In short Mr. Macdonald is now making a case and has gone public with his concerns about the lack of charges being approved in the IIO cases that were presented to Crown Counsel. What prompted his comments seems to have been, once again, a political reflex to some media pressure centred around two Indigenous cases.

One case involves a 38 year old Wet’suwet’en named Jared Lowndes, who during his arrest the police had to use a taser, a police dog, and then after ramming his vehicle, he was eventually shot in a Tim Hortons parking lot. The Crown in that case concluded and stated that they were “unable to prove that officers committed any offence in relation to the incident”.

The second case involved Dale Culver, a Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan indigenous male who during his arrest was pepper sprayed and punched when checked by police who were answering a call where it was alleged that he was “casing vehicles”. During the course of their investigation the IIO went to three different pathologists all of whom identified the primary cause of death as “tiny blood clots in lungs”, but that the blunt force trauma by the officers was a “contributing factor”. The IIO felt that the officers should have been charged based on the “contributing factor”. The Crown in their review went to a fourth pathologist, who identified the cause of death as being “cardiac arrest due to the effects of methamphetamine”. So after seven years, the officer was given an absolute discharge.

During this time, the officer’s career has been put on hold and he had been subjected to death threats. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs, who clearly feel that they have not only the right to disagree and inflame the issue, but also feel that they should be the ultimate arbiters of any criminal case involving their own, issued a statement saying: “We have a system that says when you have a gun and a badge, you can kill any Indigenous person in any town in B.C. and not go to jail”. The stupidity of the statement went un-challenged by the government.

Mr. MacDonald regardless of whether these particular cases motivated him, says the system isn’t working. He tips his political hand a bit though when he states the people have “lost faith in the system..in particular Indigenous communities.” He may have lost faith, but far be it for me to point out to a lawyer an obvious truism. The Crown has always operated on the premise of “substantial likelihood of conviction”. They have a legal need to prove a case of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Does Mr. MacDonald not see the reasonable doubt in the Culver case?

The IIO has been on shaky ground since its inception. The mandate given from the beginning was much too broad, and this was pointed out even by Rosenthal in his departure. He said at the time that it was going to cause a backlog of causes when there was no ability to “triage” the cases.

There was also a large problem in the staffing this organization. The government of the day said that the overall intention, once established, was to have all “civilian investigators”. Remember the police could not be trusted in their theoretical framework. So they limited the ability of ex-officers who could apply, especially those from B.C. If you carry this logic forward, the thought was that investigating an “officer related shooting” did not require any policing experience or knowledge of police operational structures.

There were also internal problems in the beginning, which seem to be continuing today. In 2015 there were investigations into allegations of “bullying and harassment”, allegedly due to the culture clash from hiring former police officers. During this time 17 investigators, and five non-investigative staff left the organization, only a couple of years after its inception. Flash forward to 2023 and Mr. Macdonald began speaking out and complaining of the lack of investigative resources. By then there were only 19 investigators working and 17 unfilled positions. To add to the resourcing problems, officer related shootings had increased by three times from the previous years.

The IIO in 2023 had been called in 232 cases, of which 193 led to further investigations. At the time of the article, they had 90 open investigations involving 38 deaths. In 2023, 50% of the staff were still ex-police officers and Mr MacDonald and his management staff were in turn being internally and publicly accused of bad behaviour “which created a hostile work environment… with their “belittling behaviour”.

So now in 2024 Mr. MacDonald’s has further complaints which he recently took to the air waves on the local radio station CKNW. Mr. Macdonald is now complaining about the lack of charge approval which he says is leading to a failing in “police accountability”. In the last five years, the IIO has recommended 39 cases for charge, and only 18 were approved for charge. Even more startling is the fact that since the IIO inception in 2012, only 15 cases reached the court stage, and there were 0 convictions. There was no mention of the length of time for these matters to get through the court process, which the IIO is hesitant to speak about, at least on their own official website.

If one assumes these stats to be correct, there are only a few possible answers to Mr. MacDonalds problems. One being that cases without merit are being forwarded, or the investigations being forwarded are flawed and incomplete; and simply do not meet the charge approval threshold. Or b) the process itself is not working. If it is the former, then it also may be possible that in the vast majority of cases the police are in fact innocent, and simply doing their job and doing it properly.

If it is “the process” then there are significant layers to that problem. Understaffing is clearly one of those problematic layers, as there is no possible way that you can take on every referral with such limited staff and capabilities. So you need to cut the mandate or “triage” the files more expertly as was suggested by Rosenthal.

You also need to forget the “civilianization” of the investigative team. You need to bring in ex-police officers with high levels of expertise and with significant standing amongst other current police officers. They are out there, but you need to go and find them. Building credibility is absolutely key and they have not done that since their inception. Currently the IIO is fighting the police forces, or specifically their unions on two fronts; on the access to police notes and in the area of “lethal force experts” –who are usually ex-police officers brought in to testify. They should not have to fight these fights, and better quality investigators with greater credibility will go a long way in working through those issues.

The problems within IIO are not new. They are similar to the problems which in more recent times arose from the “de-funding” era. It is a fundamental failure in common sense. The IIO mandate and their make-up is clearly flawed and has been from the beginning. One may even have to conclude that the best people to investigate the police may be the police themselves. Whether the public perception changes and the media narrative becomes less inflammatory towards the police, or whether the government understands this, is quite another matter.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by David Jackmanson – Some Rights Reserved

Productivity

Posted on by Pete Cross

One of the recent headlines in Canada originated from a speech given, in fact it was termed a “blunt” speech, by the Sr. Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada Carolyn Rogers. The speech centred around the drop of productivity in Canada in relation to other countries, in particular the U.S. and the G7. She described the weak labour productivity in Canada and said that in fact it had reached levels that should be considered an “emergency”.

Productivity in the economy is defined traditionally and measured in economic output per hour worked. In 1984 our Canadian levels were at 88% of that of the Americans, but in 2022 we are at 71% versus the Americans and we are lower than the G7 countries with the single exception of Italy. Again, the speech was one dealing with purely economic theory– productivity down, labour costs up, prices up, and the continued growth of inflation. However, this led to the question of whether or not productivity can be measured in policing or in the wider legal system.

Can labour and its level of efficiency be measured in policing, or at least to some degree? There is labour, there is time and there is an output, even though it is not an economic output? Can it be as simple as a calculation such as number of officers up, crime up, therefore police productivity down? Public Safety Canada does not even use the term productivity. So it can probably be assumed that currently there is no measure of “productivity” in terms of individual officers, or as officers in terms of a particular unit. Public Safety Canada and other police agencies, instead use the term “performance”.

There are two major differences in productivity versus performance . Performance is both qualitative and quantitative while productivity measures the impact or output of the work done and the labour resources employed.

The Federal government indicates that there are both direct and indirect measures of “performance” in relation to policing. They say direct measures are such things as crime rates, number of arrests, fines issued, clearance rates, and calls for service response times. They say “indirect” measures include, surveys, observations of social behaviour, situational studies and independent testing. I am going to ignore the latter measurement tools, the indirect tools, because it would seem to be a much more subjective set of tools and would be a lengthy topic all on its own.

In terms of direct measurement tools, there are some units in policing which are easily measured such as calls into a dispatch centre. For instance, they measure time response in answering emergency 911 calls. In the last stats reported by E-Comm , it was on average 5 seconds or less. This despite there having been an 11% increase in calls for service. A good result, with a positive spin. On the other hand they do not measure how long a non-emergency call takes; such as reporting a break and enter, or how long that person may wait on hold under those circumstances. Nor do they give statistics on how long before an officer even attends a break and enter, in fact in the cities, they may not even attend– often telling the victim to send in the details. This is just to say, measurement tools can be flawed, in-complete or mis-leading and can often be tailored depending on your viewpoint. But the fact that there are some measurements in place in terms of performance is re-assuring.

In a different example, in September 2023 report done for Police Services concerning the CFSEU (Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit) was obtained by a freedom of information request by the Vancouver Sun newspaper. In that report the agency came under heavy criticism. In the 123 page report it was stated that the agency “is neither effective in suppressing gang violence and organized crime nor is it providing the Province with an adequate return on investment”. A damning statement but what seemed more interesting is that they clearly undertook what must have made some cost/benefit analysis of the work being done by CFSEU– and clearly found it wanting. The report had been undertaken after a spate of murders, such as the one at Vancouver International Airport, and the shooting of Tequel Willis, who was only 14 but already a member of the Brothers Keepers. At the time and with the required concern expressed with this increase in blatant and brazen murders, they announced the launch of “Operation Spectrum”.

The review however, found that Spectrum operation “had no investigative component and only amounted to increased intelligence sharing between agencies” and that the entire project “fell short”. The report went further and said that “there are issues with CFSEU’s leadership and senior management model…and…a lack of continuity in policies and procedures”. They even added that their mandate wasn’t even clear. This is no small unit, there are 440 officers assigned to CFSEU, and they have an annual budget of about $90 million and are primarily responsible for gang activity in British Columbia. It is a large unit that according to this study were vastly under performing.

The CFSEU managers when questioned by the media weakly replied that they had not received a copy of the report. Is it possible that Police Services had this report, and were simply hanging on to it, and never felt the need to act on it? For the record the agency has been led since 2021 by A/Commissioner Manny Mann, who by default also oversees the Organized Crime Agency. One would have thought that there would have been some sort of repercussions coming from this report which was issued back in September 2023, when the questions were clearly pointing at the lack of performance, productivity and the eventual measured outcomes. As this is being written, so far nothing has been done and there has been no public accounting or explanation offered by the RCMP upper levels, who must have got a copy of the report by now.

Is this a measurement of the individual members of CFSEU? Not really, we can not draw that conclusion. Most everyone who has some insight into this unit knows that there are members of this unit who are hard-working, spending countless thankless hours and many night shifts trying to keep tabs on some of the many gangsters who run about this Province. That being said we also know that there are some members in that unit and other government units, who have their feet up, enjoy the overtime, and dream of a lucrative retirement. Let’s face it, every agency has the players of the system, the ones who are around for a free ride, the officers always being the “backup” car to keep away from the paperwork, and those that don’t simply like to leave the office.

We also know that the hard workers, the often quiet ones who toil away and make little fuss often go unrewarded. Promotion is “allegedly” based on performance, yet time and time again a great many of the laggers still find their way up the chain of command. One often is forced to the conclusion that performance is not being measured accurately or with any consistency.

Another complexity to any kind of measurement is the fact that there are many officers doing many different jobs sometimes inside the same unit, with different skill sets and different mandates and efficiencies. How do you measure a group who write warrant applications with another group that spend the majority of their time doing surveillance, or others who may be doing strictly administrative jobs.

Individually, every year every officer of the RCMP is subject to a Performance Review. It is assumed that municipal agencies have some similar process. In the RCMP the immediate supervisor outlines the good and the bad of the individual sitting before them. It is completely subjective and therefore often falls prey to individual likes or dislikes. Every supervisor also wishes to keep their charges happy, especially in this age of victims and apparent unlimited stress leaves, so inevitably these annual documents are positive. They are also rather lengthy documents and every supervisor dreads having to complete them. I have seen and heard many supervisors tell their underlings to write their own document and they will just sign it. Measuring performance in this atmosphere and style is clearly problematic and many would consider it as a form of process an abject failure, yet it has survived for decades.

Then consider the unlimited numbers of sections in the RCMP and to a lesser extent the municipal agencies, and how does one compare performance or productivity between all of the various Provinces and specialties. How does one measure the productivity or performance of someone on the Musical ride, or in Media relations, and how would you compare it with someone in uniform answering calls in Prince George or in Bella Bella or in London, Ontario. The pay structure however is uniform. All of the same rank make the same salary regardless of the unit, or the importance of that unit to the overall policing mandate. Performance or productivity does not factor in to how much one is paid. One can easily see the problem and the level of complexity. It is just as hard to find any willingness or intent to change it, or even make an attempt to measure it.

Public Safety as stated earlier, for the most part simply report on performance, they do not act or comment on those performance measures. They do direct measurements through such tools as the CSI (Crime Severity Index). If we glance at those statistics, the CSI was up 4% in 2022 the highest since 2007. Violent CSI, a different index also rose, with Robbery up 15%, Extortion up 39%, Homicide up 8% and sex assault up 3%. Non-violent CSI which applies to such crimes such as property theft is also up 4% and motor vehicle theft is up 24%.

The “volume of crime” index shows an increase of 5% to 5,668 incidents per 100,000 population. In any view, these statistics do not seem to lead one to believe that performance in policing is on the upswing, in fact it would be easier to assume that they are in fact trending negatively. However, there is no real accountability, except when for some reason a light is shone on one particular problem. In Ontario recently it is high end car thefts. An officer at a community meeting gathered some unwanted attention when he recently suggested that the public keep their keys by the front door to limit the damage from home invaders trying to steal keys. The message seemed to be, we can’t catch them so it is up to the public to limit them. Not the best statement if one were talking about trying to measure performance.

The usual answer you get when police executives face these poor numbers is to always go to the standard answer of it being due to dwindling resources, not a poor performance. In that, there is some but limited truth. In May of these same years, there were 70,566 officers, 406 more than in 2021– but still representing a 1% decrease, largely due to growth in population. Does a 1% decrease in resourcing explain the reason for what most would consider a poor performance?

This blog has always maintained that productivity and performance of units needs to be measured. In this age of sophisticated and minute data collection, one would hope that it is becoming increasingly possible and at some point there would be some attempts made to judge efficiency. It would seem key to having any viable and fully functioning organization. It also seems more necessary now than in past years to have some form of cost benefit measuring tool. There are many problems currently facing policing, but this should be considered one of the major issues, along with the need for much greater transparency. It has been plaguing policing for decades and at present, disappointingly there is no indication that they are yet willing to consider change and truly embrace the constant call for modernization.

Photo courtesy of Flickr commons by Mark Dyer – Some Rights Reserved

To Dig or not to Dig…

Posted on by Pete Cross

The field of policing is rich with irony and the irony in this story will become readily apparent with the telling. The subject of this blog, besides being ironic deals with the more precise issue of when politicians feel the need to interfere with police investigations and judicial processes. It is an obvious fact that politicians have a dangerous habit of dabbling in investigations. When they undertake something they are not supposed to do, they always remember to preface their actions by extolling the virtues of an independent investigational arm, one free of influence or interference, and in compliance with the Canadian constitution.They even boldly proclaim that in no way would they be associated to any strong-arming of the police to meet any political agenda.

The Federal Liberals seem to have reached a new low in terms of maintaining a pretence of an independent investigational arm. The Emergencies Act was a recent example where the politicians not believing what they were being told by the police, in fact not even asking the police, took arbitrary actions to to rid themselves of those politically embarrassing and unruly western outsiders. They self-declared them radicals and terrorists, in essence, to bring in and legally support the Act itself.

Currently in Manitoba, at the Prairie Green landfill site just outside of Winnipeg, the Federal government, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, and the relatively new NDP Provincial government led by Indigenous Premier Wab Kinew have decided that they needed to get involved in a police investigation and a court process. They are telling the Province and therefore the Police that they need to excavate the site to possibly recover two missing Indigenous women, both believed to have been murdered. It would seem like a simple ask, but of course, the facts are a little more complicated, especially from a homicide investigators perspective.

Earlier, a Federally commissioned report said that any excavation of the privately held landfill site, which contains 712 tons of asbestos, a significant health hazard, would require an examination of 60,000 tons of material to be searched and that it would cost in the area of $184 million to complete. A massive expenditure for any level of homicide investigation. The search, as indicated earlier, was to be focused and based on the possibility of the bodies of Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myran having been disposed in the landfill site by the suspect. The search was also not “guaranteed to succeed”.

Logistics aside, the most relevant factor in this discussion is that Crown counsel has already layed four charges of 1st degree murder against Jeremy Skibicki, 36, for the killing of all four women. The jury trial is in fact set to begin in April 2024. In other words, the Crown and the police are ready to proceed without it being necessary to find the two bodies. An experienced guess would be that the police and the Crown have some form of confession from Skibicki before approving and now proceeding with those charges. So the excavation of the landfill is not necessary to proceed criminally, and therefore the best argument that remains for carrying out this massive examination of the landfill site is that of giving some sort of “closure”. The Manitoba government, who have legal jurisdiction had decided that the cost and the health risks involved did not warrant excavation of the site. Of course that is not where the decision ends.

The debate to exhume the landfill site has gained significant media coverage– only and simply because this is an indigenous issue. The local Indigenous have been vocal, protesting, tying it to reconciliation, saying that the government is systemically racist, and joining it to the perpetual conversation that emanates from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous women and girls Inquiry. They have a website and two separate protest encampments set up demanding the site be excavated.

The Liberal political hacks in Ottawa, sensing opportunity, echoed their support for the Indigenous protest group, and a day after the new Premier Kinew was elected, the first Indigenous Premier, miraculously announced $740,000 for the Long Plain First Nation to do another feasibility study on possible excavation of the landfill. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs then teamed up with , Investigative Solutions Network (who advertise themselves as “North Americas Leading Private Security and Investigative Services firm), and a company called Maskwa an Indigenous business which specializes in training for “emergency response” and offers “training services”–and together they issued a clearly self-serving feasibility report.

They now estimate the cost to be half of what was previously suggested, that it would only take $90 million, and then in small print say that the figure could go up. This also based their estimate on the work being completed in one year, a rather unlikely scenario. Their report demands “intervention from both the Manitoba Premier’s office, and the Federal government to close gaps and bureaucratic systems to ensure “immediate funding” for an excavation of the site. Their conclusion– if the funding was not provided, that by not going ahead: that it would “risk setting precedent that would be serial killers fixated on killing First Nations women are left with an impression that not only will the bodies not be recovered, but the inaction will effectively obstruct recovery of victims”. Their reasoning is clearly flawed and clearly the authors have no idea how killers behave or seek out their victims.

The Feds when they filed their initial report stated that it would take at least 6 months to prepare and train staff before they began the excavation; cost them $1200 a day for an anthropologist, $1800 a day for elders, search technicians, and up to $3600 per day for a project director. Make no mistake, any search of this scope would be, for some, a very profitable business undertaking.

The proponents point to the successful excavation of the Pickton pig farm in Coquitlam, British Columbia as an example that they could follow. Just for the record, the farm in that case was started in February 2002 and went into November 2003, cost about $70 million, and there was a possibility that there was evidence of 49 women having been killed there. There was no asbestos at this site.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the country in Kamloops British Columbia, at the site of the Tkemlulps te Secwepemc residential school, ground zero for two years of allegations of “cultural genocide” and the site of where 215 children are allegedly buried in a “mass grave”– not one piece of earth has been moved. The site which spurred headlines around the world, where ground radar examination was heralded and duplicated in many sites around the country, the site which spurred flags at half mast for over six months, and led to the Federal government ponying up $320 million for future explorations — not one shovel has been put in the ground. So the evidence which could be laying 3′ to 6′ underfoot, and an investigation which is in the hands of the Band itself (The RCMP have embarrassingly, but at the same time brilliantly, washed their hands of the investigation) –nothing has been done to forensically examine and identify the “victims”.

To be fair, the Indigenous groups in their public pronouncements have since the allegations began, walked a long way back from the initial cries of “mass graves”, which stirred up images of murder and chummed the media. They now talk about the “physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional abuse” that was unleashed on these children. Despite some mellowing of the narrative, at the same time the Justice Minister is considering a recommendation from the Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray. She believes there should be laws brought in, to make it a criminal offence for residential school “denialism”. She compares it once again to the deniers of the Holocaust and feels that people should be charged criminally for “downplaying what happened in the institutions”. She called denialism the last step in “genocide”.

There are many members of the Band that never want an exhumation of the site, but Chief Casimir has said that they are now beginning to do “some of the archaelogical work” some two years after the fact. It seems that it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Kamloops site is not about exhumation, nor about investigation. It is about preserving a specific and particular narrative. The site in Winnipeg is being sanctioned because it is a continuation of the narrative. If and when you forensically examine a site is clearly a political decision in this country in these two cases, not an investigative one.

I am sure you can see the irony now.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons –Some Rights reserved

The Killings at James Smith Cree Nation…

Posted on by Pete Cross

If one ever wanted a clear picture of the utter desperation and the scope of problems facing First Nations in this country, one only needed to follow the coroners inquest that has just finished up in Melfort, Saskatchewan which was looking into the slayings at James Smith Cree Nation.

Unfortunately, but predictably, the recommendations coming from it are more reflective of our current political progressive climate, and less about the core issues. For the most part they missed the mark. We can not possibly be surprised, being that this is the age of the “victim”, this is the age of blaming, of never look inward, of instead pointing at the “system.” Let’s be honest, the Indigenous leadership in this country have turned victimization into a professional art; one which they have effectively practised at every opportunity. Their constant themes of cause and effect are always the same, then continually repeated, and the outcome sought is always the same.

Simply put, the James Smith Cree massacre is the story of a single individual with “psychopathic traits” and an “anti-social personality disorder”, a personality sculpted by abuse and crime, exposed to alcohol at the age of 13, and not soon after, transitioning to cocaine and methamphetamine. On one particular day this violent psychopath decided that he wanted revenge for some ill-defined wrong, and was also mumbling on revenge against the “Terror Squad” (part of the extensive group of Indigenous gangs that have proliferated throughout Winnipeg and Manitoba). So on September 4, 2022 after guzzling back some liquid courage with his brother, then went on a killing rampage–starting with his own brother.

Myles Sanderson had 78 previous convictions between 2004 and 2019 and at the time of the killings was “unlawfully at large” and as an occupation was dealing cocaine on the Reserve for three months prior to the killings. Most recently he had been serving five years for assault, robbery, mischief and uttering threats. In 2021 when seeking parole, he was considered an “undue risk to society”, but later in August of that same year, was still given statutory release, having served 2/3 of his sentence.

Four months after that release he was found once again in breach, re-arrested– and then in February 2022 released again.Throughout his prison life, his get out of jail card was that he was treated as an “Indigenous offender” therefore someone that the courts have been directed to deal with differently; not like other Canadians, part of a special group who had suffered “generational trauma” and through no fault of his own was one of the over “represented” in the Criminal court system. Geraldine Arcand, an elder employed by the Saskatchewan Penitentiary testified at the inquiry, about having given him his first “healing plan”.

Myles Sanderson and his wife had moved back to James Smith for the stated purpose of dealing cocaine. Despite all these efforts at understanding and empathy and despite all the socialized efforts at reform– that night he went out and killed his brother Damien, and then stabbed 10 others to death– and in the process wounded 17 others. He leaves behind his common law spouse, Vanessa Burns and their five children. At the inquiry she testified to having suffered 14 years of domestic abuse, and having reported him 12 times for domestic violence. Her suffering wasn’t over with his death, Myles on that dark day, also killed her father during the rampage.

After the killings, Myles went and hid in the nearby woods for 3 days and 7 hours. He subsequently died in police custody, after driving into a ditch in a stolen vehicle while being checked by the police. There will be a separate inquiry later this month concerning his death, because we are just as concerned about the police behaviour during his arrest, as we are of the massacre that Mr. Sanderson had perpetrated.

So this Coroners inquest, headed by Blaine Beaven, with six jurors came up with 14 recommendations, and then the Coroner added 15 more for consideration. Can you guess at what was recommended? They quickly went to the usual blaming template, aiming at all levels of government who are within easy reach. They declared that they needed “More programming and resources for offenders”..”more collaboration” (between the various agencies)…”more resources for prisoner integration”…”changes to how the RCMP deal with wanted suspects”…and in this case there is the need to “hire more elders” for the jails.

The Saskatchewan government for the record, as is also easily predictable, is “supportive” (of the recommendations)and added that they are so on top of the needed action that “some are already being implemented”. The Saskatchewan government says it wants to see more “crime reduction teams” and the RCMP for their part says it wants “greater communication”. The National Police Federation, representing the Mountie union, want “$100 million” more dollars to fund 300 more police officers, 138 of which would be there to “supplement First Nation policing resources”. (It is currently estimated that Saskatchewan is running 10% short in staffing, and an additional 7% from “soft” vacancies such as maternity leave etc.)

Another constant theme was brought up by Chief Peter Chapman who pushed for First Nations policing, which seems to be now referenced as “self-administered policing”. Chief Burns echoed his fellow Chiefs thoughts and also talked about the need for further funding of their own policing service; a police service that would be “suitable for our people”. This was followed by the usual complaint about no support and not enough monies coming from the Federal government.

Would having their own police service stopped what happened at JSCN? Would further funding and recruiting of Indigenous officers by the RCMP as Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore suggested have stopped Myles Sanderson? Would more “elders” in the prison system, more “healing plans” stopped Myles Sanderson? Would increased programming for inmates stopped him? No, of course not, Myles Sanderson was a psychopath who on that particular day was “triggered”.

All governments in Canada, Provincial and Federal are going down the road to Indigenous policing. They all agree that the 600 First Nations in this country should all have their own police services, not to mention their own laws and outcomes.

Small town police departments in this country has been fading and dying out throughout this country for many decades now, as the size and cost of policing has grown to greater and greater proportions. Practically speaking few are left because of the financial costs alone; now roughly estimated to be about $200,000 per officer per year in terms of salary and support; without adding in the costs of the initial infrastructure that is needed. Small town and village tax bases can not support this level of expenditure, it is simply economically un-feasible. Then add in the major issues of retention, staffing and training and the prospect of having multiples of small independent forces becomes patently unreasonable.

Another serious consideration is who has and can exert political control of small departments, where the officers are policing their friends and relatives, and thus opening up of the opportunities for corruption. The sole reason for having a smaller police unit in any town or village is that it is more accountable to locals, and that it can be then “tailored”. There is no other attributable reason. There is no hiding the fact that the Indigenous want political control of the police force and simply disguise it as being more “culturally sensitive”. They also don’t have the normal financial constraints, they argue that the Feds and the Provinces just need to give it to them.

Our current crop of political leaders throughout this country apparently agree, and therefore believe a separate police force, or many separate police forces, in often isolated and uneconomic regions of this country are needed as some form of twisted reconciliation logic, and they are also o.k. with the Canadian taxpayers funding it. One needs to understand the numbers.The politicians believe that the 3,394 reserves and 600 First Nations, should all have their own policing units, or “police administrations.” That 331,000 Indigenous living on Reserves, with an individual average reserve population of 600 people, should have their own individual police force to enforce the laws in a way, that is more suitable to their culture and their community needs. The costs, the jurisdictional issues, and the very ability to function under these circumstances runs counter to current police management theory which aims at integration, specialized services and shared costs. This Indigenous model simply defies logic.

This is not to denigrate the individual officers who may be currently involved. However, the thought that a police officer, from a very small community, who will do doubt be related to many that he is to police, someone who will be subjected to the volatile politics of Band councils, will somehow be able to manage and enforce the laws in a fair and equitable way, is a difficult if not impossible task. The RCMP used to move officers every 3-5 years for the simple reason that there is a tendency to become co-opted, because familiarity breeds and leaves one open to the vagaries of community politics and can call into question one’s integrity. What could lead one to think that this proposed solution would somehow be different.

Although one can easily see all the pitfalls, the government is already far down this road, and they are not seeking the approval of Canadians. Currently there are 163 policing agreements, for 1250 Indigenous officers, representing 400 First Nations in this country. They are policing about 338,000 in terms of population, which means there is on average, one officer for every 270 people living on the Reserve. In most cities the officer per capita average that is possible is one to every 800-1200 persons.

The First Nations Chiefs of Police Association claim that the Federal and Provincial governments only provide funding of $130,000 per officer, and they want more. Currently the Federal government contributes 52% of the funding and 48% is provided by the Provinces or Territories. They argue that the funding formula is unfair and amounts to “discrimination”.

The Kahnawake Peacekeepers, who police a large area of 10,000 and who boast of everyone in their department being of First Nations descent, is considered a leading example of Indigenous policing that works. The Kahnawake are now arguing for their own dedicated “highway patrol” so that they can police the 100,000 “outsiders” that pass through their territory. They also want an increase in salaries.

In British Columbia, the BC First Nations Justice Council and the First Nations Leadership Council are involved in the reform of the British Columbia Police Act. They are asking that the RCMP be scrapped throughout the Province and there be a Provincial Force set up with “expanded Indigenous policing”. They argue that there is a need to bring about “de-colonization, anti-racism, community and accountability”. They want “jurisdictional authority and funding” to bring about “self-administered policing”. Some of their suggestions/demands is that police investigation teams be replaced by an “elder, a language speaker, a spiritual leader and one RCMP officer”.

The left-leaning Liberal appointed Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the laws of this country need to “braid together”, a combination of “Indigenous laws, Federal provisions, and international standards” that are compliant with UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Persons”.

Should the average person in this country be concerned? Should the average person in this country be concerned that certain citizens have greater rights, have different laws, and now seek to transform the legal and police system in their favour? Should we not be concerned that it is also being done in quiet government conversations with no regard for costing and implementation?

The RCMP testified at the inquest that their investigation involved 548 police officers, also Municipal and Federal employees, 42 separate crime scenes, 1322 investigational tasks, 257 witness interviews and over 1000 exhibits. The theory is that in the future a hand full of officers hired to form the James Smith Cree Nation police department, armed with shiny new police vehicles, will now take over that task.

In brief, Myles Sanderson grew up and was created in a world of dizzying and utter dysfunction and all the while the community watched and protected him. Unless that world changes, there will be no stopping of people like Myles Sanderson– not even by a small local culturally sensitive police department.

Photo courtesy of R. Orville Lytle via Flickr Commons — Some Rights Reserved

Money, Money, Money… Money everywhere

Posted on by Pete Cross

I will admit from the beginning that there is a jealous undercurrent to this story, although I am sure it is misplaced. Jealous of the current cop world is normally not where I usually find myself. I am talking about the pot of gold which can be found at the end of the Vancouver police departments rainbow. And more monies in a general sense are now being thrown into the policing circle of life than has been seen for quite some time.

The rationale varies and the rationale is wholly dependent on what side of the equation you find yourself. For the Vancouver Police Department, all is good, while on the flip side, the taxpayers of Vancouver might not be quite as charmed. The search for greater monies in the form of police salaries can sometimes cause those on the outside looking in say that those numbers are becoming excessive; especially in terms of city budgetary needs and fiscal constraints. Some would even categorize it as greedy, that there is some over-reach going on, and the justifications for it are much more tenuous. It should be noted that Plato felt that greed was a part of human nature; while Darwin in his theory of evolution felt that greed was natural and good. However despite their distinguished and historic reputations, it is unlikely that their arguments would sway many in 2023– especially those living in Vancouver.

You may not remember those days when police salaries were only in the double digits. You may forget when police salaries were never headlines, mainly because they were mid-level, average Canadian salaries. The salaries seemed in the realm of normal expectations. The average family income in 1976 as an example was $19,000 per year. My first salary in the Mounties was $13,500 in 1978. Using basic math, a cop in 1978 was therefore making about 71% of the average “family” income.

Fast forward to today and the recent headlines in the Vancouver news. The Vancouver Police Department is about to ratify a 2 year agreement which will entitle a 1st class constable (someone with at least 5 years service) a salary of $122,000. ($63.41 per hr) The average family income in Canada in 2023 is $75,452 ($39.00 per hour). Therefore, a cop working today in Vancouver will be making 161% of that average family income. In terms of other “first responders” a firefighter in Canada on average makes $83,138, 110% of the average family income. A nurse in British Columbia is $91,732, 121% of average family income. These first responder salaries it would be argued would be in line when compared with other “first responders”. When the comparison is with anyone else in public view, they are indeed eyebrow raising numbers.

In case you think an RCMP officer is now under paid, lets not forget that they too just received a large pay and retroactive increase. An RCMP officer after only three years on the job is now making a salary of $106,576, roughly 141% of that average family income.

I recently received a copy of the wage rates for the new Surrey Police Service (you know those ones battling Brenda Locke). A first class constable salary is $121,989, only slightly less than that of the new VPD raise, and if you rise to the level of Inspector with the Surrey Police Service you will be at $207,381.00. This would put one well ensconced in the top 10% of Canadian wage earners which requires a salary of at least $174,000. The median doctors salary in British Columbia is $178,810 per year.

So now you get the picture, it is in effect raining gold in the world of “first responders”. And we are not even mentioning the often gracious benefits that are also attached to some of these jobs.

The rationale provided by police spokespersons normally is two fold, that it is a thankless and dangerous job, and there is a need to sweeten the pot to attract people to the job, especially in this age of heightened public scrutiny. Ralph Kaisers of the Vancouver Police Union said that police “are finally being shown the value and support from city council…they need to be properly compensated for the work they do”. He predictably cites the “dangers of the job” and the need “to retain members” as the true drivers of this pay raise.

Let us deal with the first proposition.

There is a danger to the job, that can not be disputed. That is the primary factor when police salaries are being negotiated and has been for decades. But has that danger increased? At first blush that seems to be true. New data coming from the University of Ottawa shows that the recent 10 deaths of police officers in 8 months has not been seen since the 1960’s. But as the authors note, there are twice as many police officers working now, compared to then, therefore the overall death rate is actually lower than in the past decades. The data also shows that the leading cause of police deaths, contrary to the movies and the television, are car accidents. Justin Piche the University of Ottawa professor balks at the current claims of police officers that it is more dangerous now then in the past, and says that “…it doesn’t mean they (the Police) get to make any claims they want”. The deadliest years were 1962 and 1968 when 16 officers died in those years. Since 1962 on average there have been six and seven deaths per year while on duty. All those are tragic, and this appears insensitive when you look at cold hard figures like an actuary, but we can not dispute the numbers. From a statistical perspective, there are 70,566 police officers in Canada currently, which means as a percentage that 0.009 % of police officers are killed in the line of duty.

In Canada, union and non-union construction workers are fourth in workplace fatalities in Canada and average 20.2 deaths per 100,000 population. The top three are fishing and trapping; mining quarrying and oil wells, and logging and forestry. Policing is not even in the top 10, not even above tenth place trash and recycling collectors. Nor of course are fire personnel or ambulance attendants or nurses.

A corollary to the danger question maybe are the police busier now than then? The violent crime rate in this country according to Statistics Canada dropped dramatically from the year 2000 to 2014– then there was an upswing, from 2014 to 2021 and where it stands now is about 1/2 of what it was in 2000. Is it on the upswing, yes, is it higher than in the year 2000, no. During this time period the number of police officers in Canada have gone from 55,954 in 2000 to 70,556 in 2022, giving them a 26% increase in manpower.

It is a thankless job, but that has also been true for many many years, and in previous years there was never a need to attract people to the job so other things must have changed.

Will it help to retain members? Maybe, but that is difficult to measure. Will it attract the “cream of the crop” as described by Kash Heed, the go to analyst for CKNW and Global News? Possibly, but what makes a police officer the “cream of the crop”? There are no other jobs like it, so the prior police experience factor is the only one at play here. My guess is that you will get more officers trying to transfer from the lesser paying entities to the VPD, but whether they are the best of the best is highly debatable and definitely not a sure thing.

So what are the legitimate arguments for a pay raise for policing and in particular the VPD? It would seem that the only logical argument has been the increase in inflation. The last two years have seen 6-8% inflation rates; the VPD raise amounts to 4.5 per cent per year, for a total of 9%. Mr. Kaiser needlessly points out that “our members feel it when they go to the gas station or to the grocery store”. Hopefully he is not implying that other parts of our society don’t have that same feeling.

As an aside, of course, not everyone in society gets an inflation levelling pay raise in Canada, so the police unions with their greater societal levers can lead the way in any clawing back of earnings that have been lost to inflation. Statistically, inflation has a greater negative impact on lower income families– so the average family income which was mentioned previously, is going to be proportionally hurt by inflation much more than the higher income levels. Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize winning economist would say that inflation is ” a result of too much money…a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than an output”.

Of course the biggest immediate problem with this raise is that for the people of Vancouver it will add $30 million to the annual cost of policing in the City. Which in turn means a 2.5% increase in property taxes to cover the extra policing costs. The VPD’s 2024 budget is a net $415.9 million, $6million more than the finance team was “comfortable” with; and $42 million more than the department began operating with in 2023. The VPD is also expecting to run a $3.6 million deficit this year (They also had to throw in an extra $3.3 million for the Vancouver Fire Department). As an aside you should remember that the VPD union endorsed the current Mayor Ken Sim in his election in 2022. For his part, Sim recently put in place a “budget task force” to look into areas where savings could be found–the VPD budget is not part of that review. It is estimated that by 2028 the policing budget will be approaching $500 million.

Chief Palmer in speaking about the budget is sees it as somewhat as a fait accompli; he says “so if you go back to 1990 and you look at the trajectory its always been 20-21% (increase) which is what it is today, and what it will be in 2024, and I am sure in 2028”. In others words, there is nothing you can do about it. He says, “It costs a lot to keep Vancouver safe. Thats what it costs and people get great value for their money”.

Mr. Palmers salary by the way in 2022 was $493,932 with an additional $48,282 in allowable expenses. He is overseeing 1400 police officers. In terms of responsibility, the Prime Minister of Canada annual salary is $357,800. He is overseeing the Federal public service which now has 335,957 employees, and revenues of $457 billion. Clearly Mr. Palmer is doing very well personally and is a long way from the average worker.

The million dollar question (in keeping with the money theme), is whether or not there any saturation point? Is there some point where people begin to ask or question the ever constant growth in policing costs, which will in turn at some point force us to talk about layoffs rather than hiring? Some tough questions, despite Mr. Palmers nonchalance on the issue, are clearly just around the corner.

Photo courtesy of Bruce.Guenter via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

A Murder Myth

Posted on by Pete Cross

In this age of crime podcasts and burgeoning internet sleuths, I think there may be room for a podcast or blog, whose topical subject would be all the “false” or “fictitious” information around murder cases; we could call it “Jumping to Conclusions” or “Spreading the Lie”. I was inspired to this notion this morning when I somewhat absently listened to the Simi Sara show on CKNW. Simi is the celebrated morning host for the station; who is always willing, armed with little or no knowledge I might add, to offer up solutions to fix all the wrongs in our current society. (Spoiler Alert: the solution is always more resources or more monies) She is a quick worker and can usually figure out a problem and find a solution in five minutes or less. Her investigative or journalistic “technique” is to mirror a viewpoint of her guest, a guest who always comes with an agenda, and she never feels the need to challenge or show any curiosity, she is there to agree and reinforce, on the one condition of course that it fits within the progressive acceptable dialogues.

Today’s topic on CKNW was the Highway of Tears; which was in turn entirely prompted by the finding of the body of Chesley Anita Quaw (Heron) age 29, who went missing on October 11, 2023. Chesley was an indigenous young woman who went missing from the Saik’uz First Nation, a Nation located about 85 kms west of Prince George. But the crux of the CKNW story was founded on the fact that because of where the Nation is situated, next to Highway 16, the “Highway of Tears”. And this fact alone is all the invitation that is needed for CKNW to draw a conclusion and a headline, and conflate the Indigenous narrative.

So Ms. Sara and her fellow journalists and editors at CKNW, despite having no information about the actual circumstances surrounding the death of Ms. Quaw, inferred that she must have been murdered, and that she is another victim of the “Missing and Murdered”, those that have ended along the Highway of Tears. The Highway of Tears story is an over-extended narrative which almost all news reporters have been feasting on for several years now. The Indigenous spokespeople in turn continue to fuel the narrative, after all it works in their best interests in terms of demanding a re-focusing to their plight and corollary to the need for more services and funding. So on this day, CKNW needed a guest who would talk about the “Highway of Tears” and the death of Ms. Quaw so it came about on this day that journalism was taken down another notch by Ms. Sara and her illustrious team of no fact-checking journalists. The 10 minute story was completely irresponsible, and not based on a single fact. It was shameful, and should offend anyone who relies on the news to at least bear some shred of truth and authenticity.

This was not inadvertent. Simi Sara started the show with the disclaimer that there “are no details yet”. This is an age where corroboration or confirmation is fleeting at best, although still taught in the journalism schools, it is no longer being exercised in the field. So having no details was not a deterrent to going ahead with the story, their story, one based on assumption and conjecture. They were also more than willing to comment and form a conclusion– the goal of which clearly was to resurrect the Highway of Tears narrative for dramatic affect. Her selected guest was Morgan Asoyuf, an “artist” from the Ts’msyen Eagle Clan, who was more than willing to reinforce and illustrate the CKNW investigative assumption. No need to bring on someone with at least some minimal credentials, just someone willing to be part of the act, someone that would not deterred by the lack of fact.

The show started with Simi pondering and talking about her general exasperation on having to deal with another story involving this infamous highway: “Why we are still talking about deaths on the “Highway of Tears?” She followed that up with the burning and completely inane question to her guest “Has it got any better?” (meaning one can only presume the murders on the highway) No, was the sought after answer and the guest quickly complied, and then warming to the narrative, went one step further, and added that in fact it had “gotten a lot worse”.

Simi mimicked the artist’s concern and asked her to of course elaborate. So Ms. Asoyuf went on to describe the “multiple incidents of potentially violent situations” she had encountered over these many years in driving on the highway, and then weirdly laughed when telling of the evidence that she had many times encountered “men yelling at me”. Simi was clearly dismayed and asked her how she copes with this potential violence and how she manages to fend off this always lurking danger– “how do you protect yourself?” Ms. Asoyuf then described how when she drives this remote highway, she lets friends or relatives know where she is going, and what time she is leaving. “Thats sad” replies Simi.

This moronic interview continued, with Simi asking of course as to how the community is “coping” with the finding of the body. Ms. Asoyuf is clearly now emboldened to the topic offers up her insights in these matters. She prefaces her remarks by saying that of course “as native people we are always hoping to find them alive”. She then further explains that because “these are our traditional territories” that these deaths are the “direct result of colonization” and the “targeting of indigenous women…so much racism…they think that they can kill us and get away with it”.

The interview show thankfully ends with Simi thanking the guest for her time and then attempts to sum up the devastating story we had just heard by saying, that clearly there “is no adequate safety measures” in that part of the world, and asks the audience to try and imagine a world her guest had described– one in which a woman “has to take preventative measures”. The predictable solution, by the way, was a need for “more resources” and “more funding” for “murder investigation”.

Before we go any further, here are a couple of basic facts about this particular case. Chesley Quaw was found in a wooded area “on reserve land.” Currently, there is no tie-in to the highway. Secondly, the police say that this is a Coroners case, which implies that the cause of death was not readily apparent, and the cause of death may not even be homicide. Cause of death had yet to be determined, so everything said in the media and bandied about on the social networks was nothing more than pure speculation.

This over-sized myth of murdered and missing grows and grows, by repetition, not by evidence. It is time for some context. Here are some numbers recently provided by Statistics Canada; and let us also agree that bald numbers for the most part don’t lie. They can be fudged and twisted, but they don’t lie.

These statistics are for the years 1980-2014, and during this time, there were 6,849 female homicide cases reported in Canada. Of that number 16% were indigenous women, clearly a number in greater representation to their 5% or less of the entire Canadian population. Since 1991, the number of murdered non-indigenous women has declined, while the rate of murdered Indigenous women has remained stable. Therefore, the rate of homicide for Indigenous women was almost six times higher than non-indigenous women– and in 2014 they accounted for 21% of female homicide victims. Clearly and undoubtedly there is a problem in the Indigenous community, clearly Indigenous women are getting murdered at an alarming rate. That is not a question.

The question is– is this due to colonization? Or Racism? According to the Indigenous of course it is, everything ties to colonialism. But the true answer is much more nuanced.

Between 1980 and 2014, half (53%) of the Indigenous homicides were committed by a family member, another 26% by an acquaintance– and a mere 8% by strangers. Therefore 79 % of Indigenous women were killed by a family member or a friend and acquaintance. Another interesting fact is that only 66% of those indigenous women were killed in a residence, in comparison to non-indigenous women, who were killed in a residence 88% of the time. So 17% of those indigenous women killed were killed on a street, road, or a highway, which is probably a reflection of a dangerous led lifestyle by the victim.

So the story and headline should be that Indigenous women in the vast majority of cases are being killed by their own friends and family. If Ms. Quaw is in fact a victim of homicide, the first place to look as an investigator, is to her family and friends. Not to a passing motorist on Highway 16. That is just the sad fact.

So Ms. Sara– lets do a story on the problems that infect and flourish on the reserves or Indigenous nations of this country. Take your pick on the topic. The poverty, the drug abuse, the alcoholism, the rampant birth rates, the dysfunctional families, or the ongoing in-house violence. Is the poverty the result of colonization, or is it the fact that many reserves are in un-sustainable economic regions, allowing poverty and needed government support to become a way of life? If you find poverty and drug and alcohol abuse you will undoubtedly find violence. Is ill-education the result of historic abuse or a much broader cultural and social disconnect with the 21st century? The residential schools after all were set up, however badly they performed, to address a culture and a society which was in the opinion of the politicians at the time, being left behind. Now, with guilt thrust upon us, billions upon billions of dollars are now being expended for the same reasons towards education, health and economic start ups. Is anything working? Do we need to re-examine the current concept that more money will insure success? Most importantly is there any level of personal and social responsibility in play here? Is it possible to have some introspection, or is it all the fault of the colonizers? It is easy to blame historic treatment, but surely even this argument’s validity diminishes over time.

Ms. Sara wants you to believe that Ms Quaw died because of a highway driving serial killer– there is a much greater chance she was killed or died unnaturally, because of how she lived, where she lived, and the people she was surrounded and raised by. It is time to deal with those facts and to address the underlying and dominant issues of violence and death in Indigenous society. I was offended by this story by CKNW, both as a former homicide investigator, but just as importantly as a human being wanting to find answers.

It is undeniable that we are currently in a place and time where no current government, at any level, has the courage to answer the relevant questions because of the risk of being branded as a neanderthal racist. There is no corporate entity who does not facilitate or play to the “enlightened” vocal few, there is no university willing to question rather than comply. Until there is, solutions seem unlikely, as it seems that all hard truths are only uncovered by open, fair, and honest and questioning discourse. The Report in 2019 from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls said that the “victims” was the result of a “Canadian genocide”, that the violence occurred through “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies”. As the years tick by, it’s becoming a weaker and weaker argument.

Maybe its time to look a little deeper, maybe its time for the Indigenous leadership to look a little inward. Maybe the answer is not just “economic reconciliation” but a reconciling and an accurate accounting of the human tragedy inside the Indigenous nations of which they are a part.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons via Adam Jones – Some Rights Reserved

Fall Reflections…

Posted on by Pete Cross

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on 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