Like a Rolling Stones final tour…I’m back once again

Posted on by Pete Cross

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.

Photo Courtesy of free pic.com/photos Some Rights Reserved

“Where there are trees in Water”

Posted on by Pete Cross

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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