A New Year…

Posted on by Pete Cross

Welcome to 2024, and I hope the it finds you healthy and happy and full of energy to face life’s winds, in this the year of the Dragon.

I do find that you reach a certain age in life where one spends more time looking backward, rather than looking forward, but let’s be honest, there is no such thing as the good old days. With the new year now in front of us, I feel that we need to spend some time on what is to come.

The easiest prediction is that the cost of living is going up, and house prices, despite the claims of some aren’t really coming down. The cost of policing is also on the rise and will be adding to that cost of living, usually in the form of property taxes. At some point those costs are going to be the subject of debate. In terms of groceries, never fear, Mr. Singh, our Rolex wearing NDP leader has teamed up with our expensively well tanned Prime Minister and is going to go after those bandits of the check out aisles– as soon as he and Trudeau have fixed all of our teeth.

Speaking of policing costs, in this part of the world, the transition to the Surrey Police Service will once again provide many headlines as Ms. Locke does her best imitation of Don Quixote and keeps tilting at the windmills of change in that fair city. Do you remember that this all started in November of 2021? She is clearly committed to the idiocy of her argument and is now spending $500,000 for a poll and advertising to retain the RCMP– despite the recently past legislation and having been removed from the police oversight board. The poll questions are clearly skewed to give her the results she wants, and says that 46% wish to retain the RCMP, 29% want to go forward. Of course, you will see that leaves 25% unaccounted. So they changed the questions around a bit, to show that the majority want the RCMP now. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad and desperate. It has clearly become personal.

The other counsellors in the city are being surprisingly mum on the subject, and one has to wonder if they are sitting back waiting for the next civic election to get rid of the un-glued Locke and are just using this time to plot the coup. Then there is the RCMP leadership in Surrey who seem to at least be supporting the shenanigans of Ms. Locke –and the RCMP in Ottawa who must be still trying to find Surrey on the map and are doing their best ostrich impressions of hiding their heads, hoping I guess that it will all blow away.

So the headlines and the talk will continue, as the city petition likely heads to the Supreme Court with the city arguing in part, that the Province is limiting their “freedom of expression”. Millions of dollars are going out the door with the duplication of services, not to mention the lucrative consultants and lawyers hovering on the sidelines. No one is moving the needle, and clearly nobody is worried about the cost. The individual officers are trying to make the best of this ridiculous situation. On the positive side, again remember my resolution, the Surrey Police Service with all their present hiring needs, has found the time and put a priority on hiring Ragnar, an Occupational Stress Injury dog.

In terms of sad trends, in the past year, ten officers were killed in the line of duty, mainly in the Provinces of Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and BC. One can only hope that the new year will see an easing of this alarming trend. Police involved shootings are also up; 35 in 2022, 26 in 2021 and 15 in 2020. It would seem that unstable Canadians are turning to gun violence more frequently and it would seem that the police are using deadly force to counter it, also at an ever alarming rate. It is a bit of the old chicken and egg discussion. Is it a matter of demographics, or is there something more sinister afoot? There is definitely no evidence of it changing, nor is there any evidence of people trying to even address the situation.

The homeless situation, sorry, I mean the “un-housed” situation will continue, inextricably intertwined with mental health issues, and rampant drug use. You would like to feel that enough attention is being given to it to force some level of change, but there seems to be no political authority in sight willing to face the wrath of the liberal cognoscenti and the cries of injustice that bellow forth every time someone moves a tent. The Vancouver east side will continue to be a cesspool and an embarrassment in the eyes of the world, but freer drugs is still the current liberal cry, even though it has even proven to be statistically ineffective. So people will continue to die in this Province at the rate of 7 per day, and every month there will be a wringing of political hands asking, what can we do? That too is an easy prediction.

More body cams are being given to the police now. Some will argue that this is great thing, with Vancouver PD being the latest to proclaim their commitment. The advertisers and sellers of the technology, say it will create greater “transparency” and an “increased civility”. However, we all know it began with the cries of the woke and the vocal demand for greater police “accountability”. With little doubt it will probably cut down on frivolous internal complaints, but that comes at a very great price. Winnipeg got rid of their body cams in 2017 because of the $11 million dollars to keep the program running annually. In Baltimore, the city implemented body cams in 2016 at a cost of $11.3 million, four years later in 2020, the cost had grown to $35.1 million. One should be cautious, and realize that there is a lot of money being made by companies in selling these cameras and the enormous infrastructure around it, and also be mindful of the fact that the verdict on their effectiveness has yet to be measured. (I won’t mention the New York officer in Staten Island who had his camera burst into flames while he was wearing it, leading to the recall of thousands of them– because that would be being cynical.)

It seems that in the New Year, we will continue to immerse ourselves in being victims, part of a larger traumatized society, that is always in further need of comforting. Despite all the relative prosperity of this country. If in doubt, here is one of the more recent examples, brought to us by the CBC who search the world over in pursuit of the most needy victims. Two Canadian law professors at Dalhousie University in Halifax, feel that the requirement to verify ones Indigenous status, in other words if you claim to be Indigenous for the purpose of using it as a stepping stone in furthering your academic career, that you shouldn’t have to actually prove the substance of your heritage claim. They say that “the schools proposal, the process of verifying Indigenous heritage, risks re-traumatizing staff, students, and faculty subjected to it”.

In more international news, the National Counsel of Canadian Muslims is calling on the Federal government to remove “a cap on the number of Palestinians that can seek refuge with their Canadian extended family members from the violence in the Gaza strip.” Now, that may be a group that could legitimately argued that they have been traumatized, it would also prove a perfect escape route for any fleeing members of Hamas.

Like death and taxes, an equal inevitably for the coming year is that the size of the Public Service in Canada will continue to grow. In fact it is at a “record high”, and it will cost $151 billion this year, a 31% increase in the last seven years. Coincidentally, more of these dedicated public servants have also been “investigated” for wrong-doing, in fact more than at any time since 2015. Let’s chalk that up to COVID, which is also keeping those civil servants away from a full return to the office.

The dirty money will continue to roll through Canada this year. It is now estimated to be between $46.7 billion to $54 billion, which is the equivalent of the Nova Scotia gross domestic product. According to a recent book entitled “Dirty Money” which has been authored by a group of financial investigators and academics in Canada, their conclusion is that little has changed, and Canada remains a haven for criminals. It has grown so large that it is “corroding” Canada. The FINTRAC president on the other hand, says all good in their office, and reveals that they handed over 2,085 financial disclosures to the police authorities; who apparently have done very little with it, and the information has remained “unused or un-acted upon”.

HQ and O Division of the RCMP will continue in the new year to make headlines. We are still awaiting the sentencing of Cameron Ortis, the once favoured child of former Commissioner Paulson. That was until the Americans caught wind of Mr. Ortis and his international shenanigans, and then let the Canadians know that there was a devil in their midst. He was found guilty of four counts of breaching Canada’s secret laws, in a need to know trial, and his defence counsel was flabbergasted, and will of course launch an appeal. He is facing twenty years.

HQ will continue to prove their commitment to the war on terror, and maybe gain some favourable publicity along the way. They went on full attack mode and went after and arrested a Grade 10 terrorist. A minor, that can not be named, for planning an attack on the Jewish people “by communicating instructional material related to an explosive substance”. How else can one explain the dramatic arrest which was an operational production befitting Broadway, with a perplexed Mom and Dad standing on the sidelines saying, “I don’t know w hat happened”. Clearly, they weren’t paying attention to what their son was doing in his room, and clearly the Federal Mounties treated it as though they were going after the Baader-Meinhoff gang.

O Division also recently charged one of their own. RCMP Constable Yahsif Israel Mane Monter arrested for firearm violations, human trafficking and animal cruelty (in relation to his dog breeding business). He worked previously on Project O-HELIX which was a labour trafficking case out of Hamilton Ontario and apparently drew some ideas for his own business. What happened to the days when cops were just being charged with assault, or impaired. Oh, the good old days.

The RCMP is also starting the new year, proving to be a bit of a leaking ship, either that, or they have come up with a new police operational method which includes announcing when they are going to make “arrests”. The Globe and Mail has been told of an upcoming arrest in the BC murder case of Hardeep Nijar by “no less than three sources”; who also maintain that they have been watching “the suspects” for “months”, and that they will be “laying charges in the coming weeks”. Trudeau was the first leaker, now there are three others. One has to wonder whether the leaks are being orchestrated in order to “stimulate” the suspects into some sort of culpable action? If not, then the RCMP has a serious problem. Undoubtedly there will be further announcements or arrests as the Mounties continue to watch their suspects in the new year.

My personal resolution by the way, is to be less cynical, but I will admit, that like most of my previous resolutions, it is not likely to last. We and I do need to remember that we are not living in the Gaza, or in Eastern Ukraine. Nevertheless, there was a red flag on my Weather Network app this morning– a serious warning, because Vancouver is expecting 1 cm of snow, turning to rain. I began to feel my cynicism meter already flaring.

We need to remember in this new year, even though we are continually drawn into the realm of the disenchanted, that day in and day out, there are thousands of Mounties and coppers doing a good job, or at least trying to do a good job. The media and sometimes this blog spend very little time in exulting the good that is often done quietly and with little fanfare. It is usually less interesting, less salacious, and doesn’t grab ones attention, which is the unfortunate truth of it all.

So where does that leave us for the new year. Are we hopeful, timid, apprehensive, or eager in anticipation? One presumes that it depends on your viewpoint and your circumstance. My guess is that in the end, this year will be like most years, most of us will keep plugging away at what we do, head down, while trying to ignore the craziness around us.

Happy New Year!

Photo courtesy of Doug Anderson via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

So many stories…

Posted on by Pete Cross

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on to the next story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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