My last blog for the record was November 13th, 2024 and just like Jagger and the Rolling Stones “final” tour, I thought it would be the last. But as you can see now I was wrong and I’m back to post once again. Why? It is a legitimate question but one for which I do not have a clear answer. Maybe subconsciously I always knew I would, as I did continue to maintain the site structure throughout the last couple of years. I was somewhat surprised to see that there were still people visiting the dormant site. Or maybe the reason is that I am just like a Conservative crossing the floor to the Federal Liberals, maybe the motivation can be chalked up to be just plain self interest.

In any event, all that aside, I have decided to begin writing here once again, but maybe not on the pace of one every two weeks. I am slowing down a bit after all.

In reading and watching the news during the past couple of years, it seems unfortunate but predictable that the issues in 2024 and the issues in 2026 have for the most part not changed. Some of the players have changed, or they have changed hats, but there has been very little impact on the overall policies or in the direction in the many levels of government which govern us, nor on the larger issues that plague us every day.

In the last few months there have been some rather striking stories which have stood out. With little doubt some will become part of future blogs. One of the more dramatic recent shifts which cannot be ignored has been the increases in salary in the various policing worlds. The art or science of policing, whichever one chooses to see it as, has become a very lucrative field, far from the solidly middle class occupation it once was. Bonuses and other recruitment tactics are dangling very large carrots in front of the faces of both the fresh and old faces in policing, all in an effort to try to entice police officers to switch loyalties and their uniforms.

This is also occurring at the executive level. Who cannot be astonished by Adam Palmer retiring as the Chief of the Vancouver City Police and a mere two months later taking up with the RCMP as an Assistant Commissioner. I am told he is now in charge of “recruiting”and now trying to figure out how to steal recruits from the VPD and bring them over to the Mounties after just having spent the last few months of his Chief’s job trying to steal officers from the RCMP. His larger than life salary with the VPD in 2024 was $487,224.00 ,not including his $58,867 in expenses. Now his already formidable government pension is being supplanted by a new salary of roughly $230,000 as Assistant Commissioner. It kind of makes your eyes water.

Meanwhile in sunny Surrey the duel between the Surrey Police Service and what’s left of the RCMP’s largest detachment continues unabated. Unfortunately, the Mayor of Surrey remains the same, who although she lost the battle for control of the police force, still feels it necessary to try and poke the new police force in the eye as well as put up political roadblocks to the very agency which now polices her city. She recently hired and created a position for former Assistant Commissioner Brian Edwards of the RCMP, who was head of the Surrey RCMP from 2020 to 2024 and one of the players actively duking it out with the leadership of the newly formed Surrey Police Service. He was someone who was clearly a fan of mayor Brenda Locke and her fight to keep the RCMP, so now, it seems he has been rewarded. He is now head of the brand new “Public Safety Department” for the City of Surrey; appointed by the same Brenda Locke where will provide “corporate oversight of the City’s role in the police transition plan” as part of his duties. Besides being another double dipping head shake, one cannot help but assume that future inter-government cooperation between the City and the Surrey Police Service will with little doubt be acrimonious and likely the fodder of future headlines.

At the Provincial political level, here in lotus land British Columbia, the most intriguing political battle is the one coming with the Indigenous. In a past blog I had written about the BC government’s adoption of the the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It was what I believed at the time, nothing but fanciful “wokeness”. I believed it to be an ill thought out policy which I contended would have serious negative economic ramifications. That seems to have come true.

The passage of this bill and the various court processes has now resulted and led to a 700 page judgement by a Supreme Court Judge in 2025 (Cowichan Tribes versus Canada) who has stated that aboriginal title can “co-exist” with private “fee simple” property ownership. One interpretation being bandied about now, is that aboriginal title is now superior to fee simple titles. This of course is causing issues with land, financing and mortgage renewals. The ruling resulted in the usually silent majority erupting and now Premier Eby has been forced into putting a hold on the reflective statute called DRIPA (Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act) which was passed in 2019. The matter is now headed for the Supreme Court of Canada, eventually, but it will be a years long legal journey to the top court. The Indigenous leaders of course are very upset. But, make no mistake, this about money, more about what they now term as “economic reconciliation”.

And while we are on the subject of the Indigenous, in Kamloops there still has been no digging for graves at the residential school. In May 2022 there were promises of excavations “coming soon” but two years later in 2026, no such investigation has taken place; although the Kamloops band has taken in the $9 million that was handed over for this effort. The Kamloops chief now maintains that there is no consensus as to whether or not they should ever dig at the site. What I find equally disturbing, is that despite the allegations of possibly buried children and the initial narrative of it being a mass grave site, the RCMP feels no need to be involved or take the lead in the investigation. Politics dictating and overriding criminal investigation. I never thought I would see that day.

In Ontario ( the centre of the Canadian universe) in the next few months many of us will be drawn to the corruption story headlined “Project South” where a total of 7 officers of the Toronto Metro Police are facing 41 charges related to corruption. The alleged charges are serious, where they were caught passing on police classified information to the bad guys and as a result someone may have been actually killed. It also sounds like the evidence against them may be overwhelming. As more details come forward there is little doubt that it will warrant further examination and a blog on its own.

Before finishing up this blog, as an aside, some have asked me about what happened to the “other” writing projects. One of those projects was a book entitled “Ponytail”, the non-fiction story of Rapinder “Rob” Sidhu, the rogue Mountie who became a drug dealer and eventually got caught in the United States and sentenced to eight years. He had approached me to write his story. The book was in fact completed, but the final version of the book, without going into too many details, did not meet Rob’s satisfaction. After several drafts, he was still demanding changes even though the book had already been sent to Canadian publishers. Rob felt that the story should be more a story of a “redemption” and not so much an examination of the reasons for his fall from grace which he felt portrayed him in a too negative light. In the end we agreed to disagree and concluded our legal co-author agreement.

Since then, Rob has now, rather quickly, written and self-published his very own book. His version of what he terms “leadership, accountability and resilience”, where he expounds on his philosophy of the “will to power”. The book is entitled “The Betrayal by Saints, Syndicates and Self”. where Rob states that the “job didn’t break me, the betrayal did”. As to the book, I have not read it so I will hold back any comment until I see a full version, but I felt the need to make it clear that I am not in any way associated to this book nor am I in a position to recommend it.

As I have almost reached my self-imposed work limit of 1500 words, I will sum up by saying it is good to be back, and as it turns out there just may be enough stories to write about both in the policing world and in the daily life of us all to keep both the reader and the writer interested. Thanks for hanging around, and thanks to those that encouraged the comeback. Until next time.

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