The Harm of the Online Harms Act

Posted on by Pete Cross

First there was Bill C-11, an Act to amend the Broadcasting Act in 2023, which gave the government the ability to regulate internet content, or at least some more direct oversight. It’s stated purpose was to give “Canadian broadcasting a framework to ensure online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content”.

Then along came Bill C-36 which offered up in a long-winded explanation of their mandated need to amend the Human Rights Act. It stated that it would be an offence to engage in “… a discriminatory practise to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by the means of the internet or other means of Telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or a group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination”. One needs to remember the words detestation and vilification as they re-surface in this latest legislative manifestation which is Bill C-63. An Act to Amend the Online Harms Act.

For the purposes of this blog, we will only speak to this latest bill which has now drawn the ire and prompted warnings from many fronts, even esteemed author Margaret Atwood, who has called it “Orwellian”. She warns us that “the definitions or lack of them in the law as to what constitutes punishable speech and or thought are so vague as to invite abuse”. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa points to the fact that the commission which is to enforce these latest proposed rules is not “bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence”.

To understand these growing concerns you have to sort through the interminable language and legal nuances that typically run through every piece and form of government legislation and explanation. Bill C-63 is what is called an Omnibus bill, a grouping of various Act changes all rolled into one. This type of packaging should come with a warning, as it is often used as a tactic to obfuscate some of the more controversial proposals by wrapping them around other changes.

It is clear that Bill C-63 is first and foremost an online harm bill, aimed to “reduce harms caused to persons…as a result of harmful content” that comes primarily by way of social media. It is hoping to put a stop to the online bullying and harassing, often using sexual innuendo in words and pictures as a damaging weapon. The government wish to transfer responsibility to moderate or eliminate this activity, on to the purveyors of social media and to hold them “accountable with respect to their duties under the Act”. In terms of purpose, few would argue with the intent. Whether it can be accomplished through legislation is a second real question. In any event, they are going to require that social media services submit “digital safety plans to a Digital Safety Commission”, which sounds about as “Orwellian” as George Orwell imagined.

Of course, whenever government undertakes anything, it also means the growth of more bureaucracy. In this case they want a Digital Safety Commission consisting of 3-5 appointed persons on five year terms, and a Digital Ombudsman who will advocate for the “public interest”. Those working for the Commission (they are allowed to hire “any employees are necessary” )will have authorized and unrequited access to “inventories of electronic data of the operators of the social media services”.

This legislation is also bundled with some amendments to both the Criminal Code and to the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). The Criminal Code will be amended to first and foremost define “hatred”. They will also “create a hate crime offence…” when that offence is “motivated by hatred based on certain factors”.

The CHRA amendments go further and make it an offence for any instance “in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination” and “content that foments hatred..” or “incites violence”. Also, alarmingly, “the Commission is not bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence, which includes the right to get a warrant to enter a dwelling house”.

Clearly, as stated previously, the nexus of this series of amendments intent is aimed at “intimate content online” and the “victimization of children”. But the problem is that it strays and has an amoeba like ability to stray into a broader definition of any “content that incites violence, extremism, or terrorism, or content that foments hatred”. So how does one define “foment” or for that matter “hatred”. The definitions are subjective and can take on different levels of seriousness. Foment can mean; to instigate, to provoke, inspire, encourage, generate, kindle, or fan the flames. Hate can also be described according to the dictionary as; loathing, dislike, resentment, aversion, or animosity.

It is the reason why most online law experts say that the Act as written due to these broad definitions, violates constitutional and privacy rights. That the social media groups if forced to comply would by necessity have to rely on artificial intelligence and algorithms to mediate their platforms, and this will by its very nature cause a “disproportionate use of censorship”. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association point to the sections which allow searches of electronic data without warrant, which would grant sweeping powers to a single government un-elected agency and could be in a position to censor strong opposition to political authorities. The Canadian Constitution Foundation focuses on the words “detestation” and “vilification” as being too broad and they believe it would widen the various grounds of discrimination. The punishment by the way for a contravention of the hate laws should one be convicted of a “hate crime” can be as much as a “life sentence” –under these Criminal Code amendments.

Interestingly, there is even a provision which allows for a peace bond to be obtained– if someone or some group were “likely to create a hate crime”. In other words there will be an ability to exercise what they call “prior restraint” under this Act. If a Judge believes that there are “reasonable grounds” to fear some “future” hate crime, that person can be sentenced to house arrest and electronic tagging. Keep in mind a peace bond needs only one person to proceed if they can convince a Judge of their concern.

When you look at the continuum of government legislative moves, including Bill C-11 and Bill C-36 you can clearly see a rather ominous pattern. They are models of government trying to grasp greater control of what we see, read, and listen to. Also troubling is that these most recent legislative attempts are well hidden, disguised in the world of good intentions, covered with the cloak of big brother. In trying to get to the motivation one wonders if this progressive Liberal government is simply overwhelmed by the need to react. To see any evidence of public outrage as a time for them to act. In this case, online harassment and the tragic cases like Amanda Todd have been receiving constant and continued attention and the government feels the need to protect us and thus gain our continuing support.

A further question is whether it is possible that in order to be seen to be proactive and in their knee jerk reactions they produce a piece of legislation without enough scrutiny as to the side effects or results of their activism? If one considers the levels of bureaucracy and the layers of legal scrutiny that act as filters before something becomes legislation it would seem unlikely that the government has just not thought it, so if government ineptitude is not the case, then the explanation becomes a lot more sinister.

John Stuart Mill, considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century who wrote extensively on the history of liberalism, described the need for protection from the “tyranny of the magistrate” and the need for protection from the “tendency of society to impose its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those that dissent from them…” He referenced it as the “tyranny of prevailing opinion”.

It does seem clear that this Federal government has a fundamental precept that they know better, that they in their elected duty, have been entrusted to look after us; the flip side being that we can not be trusted to look after ourselves. This, they constantly argue is all for the betterment of a progressive society and therefore self-justification to extend into every aspect of our lives. This philosophy is not new, it has been going on for some time. Rules and regulations now already saturate our work places, our private lives, where we live and how we live. We can not be responsible therefore they will be responsible for us.

This most recent legislation will protect all of us from “harm”. It is a laudable goal to be sure when it comes to the targeting of children and teens by those wanting to exploit them. However, this government whether through lackadaisical legal drafting or in a conspiratorial way is trying to gain the upper hand in what is written or spoken against their agenda. Maybe this government has been emboldened by the use of the Emergencies Act, and Covid 19, where they proved that Canadians will go along with even some of the most draconian measures –if they can be convinced that it is merely to protect them, to keep them out of harms way.

And if you think it may be far fetched to think that persons could try and control speech through this particular piece of legislation, consider this; currently, there is a lawyer in Saskatchewan, Eleanore Sunchild, claiming that residential school “denialism” should be included in the Criminal Code as a criminal offence and is equivalent to Holocaust denialism and therefore a “hate crime”.

Bill C-63 for all these reasons should be considered completely unacceptable. This Federal government unwillingly or intentionally is leading us into very dangerous territory. It is hard to believe that most Canadians continue to not pay attention.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by Apionid – 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

Some late Vindication…

Posted on by Pete Cross

It took a 74 year old long-time lawyer and Justice, having spent a lifetime in security related matters, someone with two feet clearly planted on the ground, to finally call out the Liberals and their authoritarian ways. In the past week, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley finally righted the wrongs of the imposition of the Emergencies Act. It was roughly two years ago that the “Act” was imposed on February 14, 2022, with grand fanfare and a concerned grimace by the Prime Minister. His forever kowtowing Ministers, and his NDP cohorts, profusely nodding in vigorous agreement standing behind him. This group of progressive liberals launched an Act designed, as it names implies, for a National Emergency, and when imposed, dictated full control over the lives of its citizens and specifically their ability to protest. There should be no mistake, this was a move that was in this writer’s opinion purely political, a move meant to show strength and determination, and aimed specifically at a group that had the audacity to question, a group that did not support the governing Liberals–in other words, they were the enemy. To put it in even simpler terms, the Liberals and their ilk did not like these protestors, these anti-vaccine rednecks, who came from afar. They were not of them.

Judge Mosley declared in his ruling that the imposition was “unreasonable and infringed on protestors charter rights”. That it did not “bear the hallmarks of reasonableness–justification, transparency and intelligibility”. He confirmed in essence what many thought –there was “no national emergency”. The faithful readers of this blog will remember a blog some months ago entitled “Sledgehammer and the Peanuts” which argued these same points; that the blaring of horns, the smell of diesel, bouncy castle encampments, and the disruption of the workday for bureaucrats in Ottawa (who were working from home through all this because of COVID) did not fit the definition, no matter how broadly interpreted, of this being a national emergency and that it certainly did not need such an all encompassing and arbitrary legal hammer.

The protest and the reaction to it did show that in Ottawa, if you put too many police departments in the kitchen, the broth will in fact be spoiled. The frustration and lack of coordination by the RCMP and the Ottawa Police Service, combined with the Doug Ford non-response, bordered on farce.

Of course this ruling was a kick in the pants for those fearless crime fighters Trudeau and Freeland; they know that this is not good in terms of going into the next election. Freeland, undeterred by a lack of factual support for her argument, went immediately running to the microphone, saying in her pedantic kindergarten teacher voice, “the safety of individual Canadians was under real threat…our national security was under real threat”. Quite an explanation.

So the Liberal government immediately have said they were going to launch an appeal. Usually the governing party of the day and any governing party would be more cautious in challenging the judiciary, normally they would “take it under advisement” or would be “studying” the case. It demonstrates the level of incomprehension amongst these Liberals as to someone having challenged their decision making, a court saying to them, no, you were wrong, and in fact you breached the Charter of Rights. How dare Judge Mosley describe the decision making at the time, as only based on “speculation” and that it had led to “unreasonable search and seizure”. The Liberals, of course have not released their legal grounds for that appeal, so I am suspecting that the Justice Department is now assigned to go find those grounds.

It is good to remember that there are four grounds to impose the Emergencies Act as clearly written: a) a public welfare emergency b) a public order emergency c) an international emergency, and finally d) a war emergency. CSIS in the Act is the defining authority in terms of what constitutes a security emergency. Clearly the latter two conditions, c) and d) didn’t apply, so the Liberals will have to continue to argue that it was a public welfare or public order emergency on a national scale. It was very interesting at the time, that CSIS Director David Vigneault in front of the Rouleau Commission, in a classic case of double-speak, said that even though the circumstances “didn’t meet the definition of a threat to national security”– nevertheless he supported the government decision. So in the end he supported what turns out to be a serious breach of rights of Canadian citizens, when he didn’t feel that there were grounds to do so. Time for Vigneault to step down.

So what will be the Liberal strategy be to fight this public relations nightmare. They are going to point to two arguments, and they have already started down this road.

First and foremost, they will point to the earlier mandated government appointed Commission that was chaired by Justice Paul Rouleau. The “appointed” Commission predictably found that it was “a failure in policing and federalism”, that it was in fact a “national emergency”. This was a bit of sleight of hand. The Commission mandate was to “examine and assess the basis for the Government’s decision to declare a public emergency…appropriateness and effectiveness of the measures selected by the government”. It was was not in fact a “legal” finding. The Federal Court with Judge Mosley on the other hand was to determine the legal “threshold” having to be met for the imposition of the Act.

Rouleau interestingly also said that it was a “difficult decision” he came to and that the “factual basis” for his finding “was not overwhelming”. I guess the lesson there for everyone is to never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

The Commission was politically tainted, it appeared to have been set up purposely to ameliorate the decisions by the government of the day. The allowed testimony was not subject to being tested in terms of any extended cross-examination. The Minister of the day, now former Justice Minister David Lametti, during his testimony even refused to reveal the legal opinion which prompted their taking of the action, arguing lawyer client privilege. It was pointed out to him that he could have waved the privilege, but he would not. Mr. Lametti, who was so traumatized during the days of the convoy, that he moved back to Montreal, in a recent interview he now of course “disagrees totally” with Judge Mosely and is “confident” that they will win an appeal.

The other argument that the Liberals will bring is the example of what was going on at the time in Coutts Alberta and the roadblock there. It led to an investigation of an extremist group who wanted to attach themselves to the protest, and they were intercepted and charged by the RCMP. This Liberal argument is also disingenuous. The investigation and charges were brought about through the Criminal Code not the Emergencies Act. The police used the existing powers to bring that investigation to a close. So as Judge Mosley points out in his decision, the “existing laws were sufficient”, to deal with the Convoy protests, that the regular laws were open to the police and could handle the situation. The protestors that were charged, Tamara Litch and Chris Barber won’t necessarily be helped by this Federal Court decision, because they were also charged under the Criminal Code, not under the Emergencies Act.

Judge Mosley also added that “economic disruption cannot form the basis of extraordinary measures”. The Liberals during this “crisis” often argued that the Windsor border blockade was disrupting trade going into the United States. Ms. Freeland trotted that argument out again at her recent press conference, again arguing that Canada’s “economic security” was threatened. Maybe, she had not read the entire decision?

It is also interesting to read the various takes of those in the Liberal support groups, who were supportive of the government measures at the time. The CBC called it a “a divisive decision” and that illustrious leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh now says that he only “reluctantly supported the Act”. The Ottawa citizens who formed a civil class action against the protestors, which is seeking $290 million for their Wellington Street disruption, are still saying this ruling does not hurt them. Their lawyer Paul Champ argues that their case is about “honking, its about parking on the street, not for an afternoon of protest, but for weeks”. If one ever needed convincing that the citizens of Ottawa, and the bureaucrats who are governing this country live in a hermetically sealed environment, this is the case.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a group which I rarely find agreement with, but brought the case forward to the Federal Court, said that the actions of government in this case, that the imposition of these types of laws “…are dangerous to democracy”. This decision, if looked at in a broader scope, should be seen as an examination of the very tenuous nature of democracy. The solitary Judge showed us how thin that thread really is, and for that we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Photo courtesy of Michael_Swan of Flickr Commons – some Rights Reserved.

No longer Dancing with India

Posted on by Pete Cross

Can anyone forget our Prime Minister dancing on to the stage at a diplomatic function in India, dressed in full Indian garb, apparently trying to demonstrate both his ability to cut the rug with the locals, while at the same time demonstrating his love for the Indian people and his obvious personal love of the spotlight. Flash forward to the present day, to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India now kicking our Prime Minister hard and squarely in his back end with his pointed juttis. Trudeau was snubbed so like the petulant child he skipped the formal dinner, pouting, and just wanted to get away, only to be stymied by a grounded airplane with a single missing part. He was personally embarrassed and he embarrassed our country.

A short time later, back in the safe confines of Canada, Trudeau decides to publicly out and allege that India was complicit in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijar. Nijar was gunned down outside the Guru Nanak Gurdwara Sikh temple on a mild June evening this past summer in Surrey, British Columbia- shot in his vehicle as he was leaving the area. It was an outrageous allegation, that in and of itself demanded evidence. Trudeau stated, and we must pay attention to the words, that there were “credible allegations” that “agents of the Indian government were involved”. The press began to move in and question, so the government elaborated to a minor degree by way of explanation that they had “shared intelligence among the Five Eyes Partners that helped lead Canada to making these statements.” The pressure for answers began to grow, the government went a little further and said that the information came from “an unspecified member of the intelligence sharing alliance”.

The two masked and unidentified suspect gunmen fled, and were only captured on video, leaving in a grey small sedan. No charges have been forwarded to date although it is still somewhat early in the investigation.

This is not an easy case, because Nijar was not just a plumber, as was his listed occupation. Mr. Nijar has a complicated history, in fact a long history of interactions and clashes with both the government of India who were chasing him as a labelled “terrorist”, and then with the Canadian government as he fled India and took up residency in Canada.

Some deeper historical background is necessary. The Sikhs make up about 2% of the Indian population, and are in fact a religious minority in their home country. In the 1980’s there was an orchestrated Sikh movement in the state of Punjab, to form a separate state of Khalistan. They pushed their agenda with acts of repeated violence and numerous attacks on government agencies. It was ongoing until the armed forces of India eventually made a concentrated effort against the group; running several military style operations which effectively helped to dismantle the group or at the least drive it underground. The central government of India to this very day has strongly opposed the Khalistan movement, as have all the mainstream parties, including those in the Punjab; and all have continued to denounce the violence and the move to separatism.

Canada became a favourite country for the Sikhs and now is the largest Sikh diaspora outside of the Punjab. The cries for a separate state of Khlistan simply moved or were imported to the ever welcoming Canadian mosaic. Over the last number of years, both sides of the Khalistan argument have frequently taken to the streets in Canada in variously sized protests, with the people siding with the separatists posting signs such as “Kill India” and labelling Indian diplomats as “Killers”. Canada’s short history in terms of the Sikh’s is replete with extremism; do we need to remind people of June 1982 when Air India flight 182, was bombed out of the sky killing 329 people– and the fingers of that investigation pointed directly to Sikh extremists inside the borders of British Columbia. So when we consider that one man’s terrorist is the next man’s freedom fighter, it is not difficult to imagine Mr. Nijar as possibly not being a completely innocent victim in all of this. It is equally important to note that the Sikhs in Surrey and in Vancouver British Columbia, are a prominent and active vocal political group–and massive supporters of the Federal Liberals and the Liberal and NDP Provincial governments.

In 1998, Mr. Nijar had arrived at Pearson airport in Toronto, under the name “Ravi Sharma”, and applied for Canadian citizenship and in doing so told a long sordid story of torture and threats to his life, his brother and his father. He was turned down as the Immigration authorities simply did not believe his story. Eleven days later he applied for Canadian citizenship, as he now claimed to be married to a B.C. woman. She had been also sponsored to Canada, but by a different husband. So again, Mr. Nijar was denied Canadian citizenship and he appealed. In 2001 that appeal was denied. However, in the ensuing years and at the time of his death, Mr. Nijar identified himself as a Canadian citizen and was married with two children, and supporting himself as a plumber in Surrey British Columbia. He remained politically active and in 2018 he was elected President of the Guru Nanak temple, which is a Federally registered charity, and has over the years had some questions raised in terms of their financing. In 2019 Nijar would be charged criminally with assault, but the charges were later dropped.

Meanwhile over this span of years, the Indian authorities had issued a warrant through Interpol for Nijar’s arrest in 2014 and alleged, that he was the “mastermind/active member of the Khalistan Tiger Force”–a terrorist group. He was implicated in the bombing of a cinema in 2007 as part of their evidence. India’s National Investigation Agency announced a reward for his arrest in the amount of the equivalent of $16,000 Cdn.

So this raises a couple of serious questions. Why was Nijar never arrested under the warrant, although he was clearly in plain and public view? Canada has an extradition treaty with India, so that is not the excuse. The Indian government has in fact been complaining for years of Canada being a refuge for Sikh extremists; despite this, no effort appears to have been made to arrest Nijar. Was Nijar in fact a Canadian citizen? If he wasn’t, that too would have made him libel for extradition proceedings under the Immigration Act.

One must be clear though that nothing allows or would allow a government sanctioned killing in Canada; regardless of the long-standing political and economic ties to India. As the American ambassador said of course, if those allegations “prove to be true”. Or as Melanie Joly said that the Indian government “may have been involved”.

But we need to look at Trudeau’s decision to out the “ties” to the Indian government in terms of Nijar’s murder. As a former member of the CSIS precursor, Security Service, and as a former homicide investigator, at no level, and under no set of circumstances, could this Trudeau move ever be sanctioned. It was irresponsible and will have secondary economic ramifications in the billions of dollars. Politically now India has expelled a number of Canadian diplomats and the relations between the two countries is at its lowest. It would seem that the only motivation behind the pronouncement by Trudeau was to swivel the klieg lights onto our brilliant freedom fighting Prime Minister and away from the negative tone of his trip.

From a homicide viewpoint, how could this have helped? If your true goal is to bring some justice to this matter, and capture the persons responsible how was this supposed to play out? Do you think that by advising the possible suspects that the Canadian government may be on to them would do anything other than alert them to either run or be more cautious, or if the Indian government was involved, to destroy any linking evidence.

From a CSIS perspective, it is always considered a final step in any diplomatic kerfuffle, whether it be a diplomatic spying case, or a case such as this, linked to some criminal behaviour, that you expel any persons. You never tip your hand, until you can do nothing else. That is just the nature of this murkish spy and political investigation world. To kick a diplomat out of the country was always considered an admission of desperation on the part of the investigative group, simply a last ditch effort to demonstrate your effectiveness, to send a message. And almost always, one had to anticipate that the offended country would then do the same, tit for tat, expel a Canadian diplomat in retaliation, with nothing ever really accomplished by it. Furthermore, if there was some diplomat of India involved in the case that was captured by human or signal intelligence, it is better to leave them in place, to know and control the identity of the devil, rather than expel him or her and start over again.

So as far as can be determined, Trudeau has one possible out. Reveal your evidence. Lay criminal charges– as did Britain in the Sergei Skirpal case in 2018, when Skirpal and his daughter had been poisoned by the Russians. Charges were layed, and people were expelled, and the offending country was called out with the presented evidence. If you can not do that, then this could only be labelled as blatant and disarming level of incompetence which may have interfered with a criminal investigation.

We as Canadians need to understand that if you going to open the doors to the immigrants of the world, they will come with their customs, their religions, and their beliefs. We have offered safe harbour to many groups that are escaping the violence and corruption of their homelands, but it has always been well known that planted among them will be the extremists. The Canadian government seems to have naively looked the other way. Meanwhile one can only assume that the Five Eyes community are not looking the other way, but are now rolling their eyes heavenward.

Photo courtesy of Jorge Lascar via Flickr Commons — 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

Looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right

Posted on by Pete Cross

My mistake, I have committed another faux pas–Mr. or Mrs. is now deemed sexist. I should have entitled this blog:

“Looking for Mx (pronounced miks or muhks) Right”.

It just doesn’t have the same narrative flow.

In any event, if you in the trenches failed to notice, and you can be forgiven, Commissioner Lucki is now gone. It has been five long years, and we are once again faced with who is going to replace her. The government is moving slowly, surprise, surprise, and they haven’t really set up any search committee yet to find her replacement, even though Brenda was nice enough to give a months notice. Nevertheless it will take a few more meetings just to devise a list of board members on the search committee. This list will of course comprise of like minded Liberals or academics who fully appreciate the overall goals of the Liberal Party and Mr. Trudeau. The last time we went through this, there were a number of liberal elite persons chosen for this selection board, the likes of Frank McKenna, all who clearly needed a few more months at the trough. And after assembling this super group of intelligent and insightful people and a lengthy country wide search; the results of those expenses laden trips was that they recommended Brenda Lucki– and deemed her the most qualified of all that applied.

One can only hope that this same group is not brought together again.

Meanwhile Michael Duheme is wriggling his bottom into the leather executive chair to act as the interim commissioner. No doubt giving him some time to decide whether he should also take the time to polish up his RCMP resume, which he has already used to great effect throughout his career. So we can not rule him out.

Mr. Duheme was born in Quebec and includes on his resume–General Duties in Nova Scotia, ERT, VIP Protection, Peacekeeping Missions in Kosovo, was Director of Parliamentary Protection Service and the CO of N Division. Pretty well safe to say that Mr. Duheme is an Ottawa-centric figure. Having watched him at some Committee hearings, he was clearly better than Lucki in doing the shuffle dance, and he did somehow came out unscathed from most of the flames being thrown at the Commissioner during her troubled years. This you could view as either a positive or a negative.

Meanwhile, in the soul crushing corridors of Ottawa HQ, the cafeteria talk is abuzz with the who will be the next Commissioner question, that is if they are not still working from home. There will be jostling by the various sword carriers who will be aligning themselves with who they think that will be and how to best position themselves to be closer to the papal chair. I live a long way from Ottawa, but I still have friends that toil there, exasperated friends to be sure, but they have helped to clue me in to who the front runners are currently– and who are therefore the subject of this blog.

But before your “rapporteur” goes through this revelation for those outside of Ontario and Quebec who are not in the loop, we need to first review the obvious selection criteria that will be the primary and overriding considerations in this process.

  1. Mr. Trudeau, who declares himself a feminist, likes to have women around him in positions of authority. As a result the RCMP internally has tried to meet Mr. Trudeaus expectations with the promotion and raising up of women to the highest echelon. (they are actually now over-represented in terms of the makeup of the police employees).

2. It is equally clear that Mr. Trudeau has only two causes in his platform, and one favoured special interest group; climate change, diversity, and the Indigenous. He seems blind to the other major issues that constantly whirl around Ottawa, and obviously he is totally ignorant of policing issues, and in fact shows no real interest in them. This is the guy who never asked Lucki’s opinion in the fateful Cabinet meeting to declare the Emergencies Act.

3. Keep in mind that Trudeau, and the rest of that group do love a good public relations announcement. To announce the promotion by starting off: “The 1st _____”. Fill in the blank. First full-time woman Commissioner (Ms. Lucki), the first Indigenous, the first gay, the first transsexual, etc. We are still very much in the age of the race and gender being translated as a quality of leadership. Equity of outcome, not equality is the current practise in the Federal government.

So keeping these rules in mind, here are the current list of front-runners which I am told are being bandied about for the next Commissioner. They are not in any particular order and there is no betting money-line on FanDuel, or MGM to help parse the odds.

a) Kevin Brosseau.

This candidate has been around before. He was in the front runner list when Commissioner Lucki got the job. He is a highly educated, far and above the others on the list, and was from 2016-2019 the Deputy Commissioner for Contract and Indigenous policing. Possibly disappointed in not getting the job last time, Mr. Brosseau went on to become Assistant Deputy Minister for Safety and Security at Transport Canada, and most recently he became Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. He has a Master of laws from Harvard Law School, and is a Fulbright scholar, so intellectually no slouch. He was born in Bonnyville Alberta and is of Metis heritage but one wonders if he can make another move from gill nets to handcuffs.

b) Rhonda Blackmore

Rhonda is currently the CO of F division, who worked for 7 years in detachments such as Assiniboia, Grande Prairie, Buffalo Narrows. Then it was off to Ottawa. She went through a few departments over 9 years including being the executive officer of the Deputy Commissioner of Contract and Indigenous Policing. She was the travel officer with the Governor General, as well as stints with National Traffic Services, the National Use of Force program, and the National Operational Policy and Compliance unit. She was moved upwards through Mrs. Lucki’s reign on a continuous basis and when asks, speaks at length about her support for the troops. She is clearly an Ottawa wonk and can speak the woke language. She has been married a couple of times, but I have been told “she is married to the Force”. Upon becoming the CO of F Division she said her priority was “continuing our reconciliation efforts, with our Indigenous peoples”.

c) Raj Gill

Mr. Gill served for 29 years with the RCMP before becoming the Deputy Chief for Calgary Police Service. He was Assistant Commissioner for National Human Resources. Mr. Gill since arriving in Calgary is specializing in the area of “equity, diversion and inclusion” and developing an “anti-racism strategy” to combat the systemic racism in the Calgary Police Service. This of course doesn’t go over well with some, but it is the flavour of the day, and Mr. Gill is clearly an advocate to push that agenda forward. Mr. Gill would clearly fit the criteria of being able to announce “the 1st South Asian Commissioner of the RCMP”.

d) Nadine Huggins

Ms. Huggins is currently the RCMP Chief Human Relations Officer. Of this group, she is the only one with no previous policing experience, and is a long time public servant. She is relatively new to the Mountie group starting in 2020, but now lays claim to “People Management Modernization” and her bio brags that “under Nadine’s direction we have created and are currently driving the People Strategy… and the Vision 150 Equity and Accountability and Trust Action Plan”. You will be forgiven if you are already tuning out. Though she could be headlined as the “1st Black Commissioner of the RCMP” and quite honestly that may be her biggest positive. There are quite a few rumours that Ms. Huggins has even been known to bad mouth the RCMP in quiet aside conversations. Maybe not the best look for a future Commissioner.

e) Mike Lesage

Mr. Lesage in 2021 was named a Deputy Chief with the new Surrey Police Service (so, might be out of a job in the next few weeks) but previously was an Assistant Commissioner for the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. His forte apparently though is Community Policing and will be in charge of the SPS Community Policing Bureau. Mr. Lesage I am told has two things going for him, he is Indigenous, and he is good buddies with retired Deputy Commissioner Jennifer Strachan. Quite frankly only one of those things may help him. He seems like an outside candidate at best.

So there you have it, the best the Mounties have to offer to replace Commissioner Lucki and fill her rather small shoes.

It’s also possible that there could be someone outside the realm of policing waiting in the wings. Gerald Butts? maybe?

It is understandable that if it is going to be someone from this group which we have just outlined, that they likely represent “more of the same”. They do not appear to be a group from whom radical and progressive initiatives will be forthcoming. They have all sharpened their teeth on being politically astute in terms of “diversity” and “inclusivity” and the language you must spew if you are to survive and prosper.

So, in any event, there your choices a) thru to e): or, it could be choice

f) – None of the above.

Feel free to let me know if any of the candidates have some appeal to you. I do not know any of them personally, but I am sure they are fine people. Remember though that we are not necessarily looking for a nice person.

Meanwhile, behind the RCMP curtain, the Mounties as we know them, is slowly disintegrating, brick by crumbling brick. To enter into a fight to reclaim their once national status is going to take a very strong and gifted individual. Or, they are going to be overseeing a total revamping of the current structure, and that too will take a monumental effort.

Cast your ballot. Oh sorry, I forgot, you regular members of the RCMP don’t have a vote.

Photo Courtesy of Louri Goussev via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Moving to Control what we read and see

Posted on by Pete Cross

In the early 1980’s I was a just graduated wet behind the ears Mountie, stationed in J Division, to be more specific, Newcastle Detachment in New Brunswick. Like all small towns, there was a local dive bar where beer came predominantly by the glass. It was the Black Horse Tavern and any given day you would find a few alcoholic strays hanging about, gingerly balancing on the bar stools, cradling their medicinal alcohol. I often noticed as I meandered through the bar as part of my duties, that off in a corner was a young man, who fit the surroundings in his level of dishevelment, but still seemed aloof from the others. He was usually writing, books and other papers strewn about his single wooden table by the window. I spoke to him on a number of occasions, exchanging general local chat. He was trying to make a living by writing, an unusual and daring career choice in that impoverished region in those particular years. This geographic area is known as the Miramichi, and through the decades those that work and survive in this part of the world usually made a living as fishers, miners or loggers. The work pattern also meant that you went through long periods of unemployment. It was a hardened part of the world, but it was a part of the world where the people had a lasting impression on me.

This aspiring and clearly doggedly determined writer was David Adams Richards, and despite the odds, this young fellow did in fact make it. Some forty years later he is regarded as a writer of extraordinary talent, who besides now having written and published many books, has collected many awards, and even won the Governors General award for both fiction and then again for non-fiction. His stories and novels, especially in the early days were about the Walsh family and growing up on the Miramichi and the people who frequented the Black Horse Tavern. The first book I personally read was “Nights Below Station Street”, It was the first of a trilogy, a poignant tribute to the families who I too had come to appreciate.

The bar where he began is still in existence and Yelp describes it as still having a “nice dive bar ambiance”. He on the other hand is no longer sitting in the bar, he is now sitting as a Senator in Ottawa. A liberal appointed, but now “independent” Senator, who is now rising up and speaking against some of the laws the very people who appointed him are proposing. He has been speaking about the dangers of Bill C-11 and its move to censorship and control of the media and its content. It is a speech worth reading, if for no other reason than that he wrote it.

From the government who gave us the Emergencies Act, we now have two more bills coming down the Parliamentary legislative pipeline hatched from the political ideologies of the Liberal left. These mandarins of social justice are now championing the need to control what is being said,and what is being shown to you. One bill is C-11, labelled the Online Streaming Act, which is already into its 2nd reading, and it this bill which prompted the speech by Senator Richards. The second piece of legislation that parallels these government intentions is still at the proposal stage, and it is currently called the Online Harms Bill.

With regard to Bill C-11, Richards speaks against the idea of someone being appointed to determine “Canadian content” or “what someone can write to fit a possible agenda”. He doesn’t feel that any “hierarchical politico” could or should make this determination, and that Bill C-11 was a “balkanization of freedom of expression” and that it would lead to the “scapegoating all those who do not fit into what we bureaucrats think Canada should be”. Strong words from the normally progressive left side of the fence.

In the Online Harms bill someone will determine what is “information” versus what is “disinformation”; and someone or a body of like minded politicians will tell us what is “hateful” and what is not. This political majority currently forming government in Canada and voiced and interpreted by thousands of Federal employees believe that they know what is good for us. They have a religious ferocity in trying to keep us “safe”– or at least expressing the fact that they are doing all this to keep us “safe”. They wholly believe that another layer of government surveillance to hang over the top of what we read, see or hear would go a long way to protect us and keep our questioning thought processes in check. We clearly, are in their view, frail and weak-minded; we believe everything we see and hear and read, and are not capable of appraising the value of the contents. Mr. Trudeau and his Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez are thus willing to help us, to oversee our protection.

Bill C-11 is a rewriting or revision of the old Broadcast Act. It was this Act which introduced rules that certain portions of media had to insert a percentage of Canadian content. Bill C-11 is to carry this further and delve into the new age of the internet, or as bureaucrats like to call it, the need for “online undertakings”. Netflix or Youtube will now be government mandated to carry certain amounts of Canadian content. The Liberals claim that this will only be applicable for “commercial” content, but many legal experts in examining the bill agree that it is possible under this law the way it is written that the government could have control over “user-generated material”.

They are not hiding from this form of censorship. On a Government of Canada website, they state that the government “is committed to putting in place a transparent and regulatory framework for online safety in Canada”. (we won’t comment on whether this government has ever been considered “transparent”). They are working on developing policies, “when Canadians can express themselves and be protected from a range of harms” and they want a society that “upholds the same principles which they believe made Canada successful–a respect for difference, a belief in human rights, a recognition that there must be reasonable limits to expression in a free society”. The sentence starts off benignly enough, but when they get to “reasonable limits” one better be paying attention.

There are two groups trying to fashion the Online harms piece of legislation; one is the Citizens Assembly on Democratic Expression and the other is the Digital Democracy Project. Both names would be good chapter titles in Mr. Orwell’s world. These groups are calling for “immediate and far reaching regulations to curb…pernicious…unconstrained” commentary; to mitigate the “particular risk for those who are vulnerable…experience the impacts of systemic racism, colonialism, as well as other prejudices and barriers”. This group of overseers are proposing an “ongoing review and revision”.and are suggesting that there be created a “Digital Services Regulator” and a “Digital Ombudsmans office”.

Of course the very vocal social interest groups want to get in on the action. For example, Danielle Paradis a spokesperson for the Indigenous feels this will go a long way to “decolonizing digital spaces” and should be constructed to allow the “incorporating indigenous worldviews and digital regulations”.

All of this of course has an other worldly feel, it makes you shudder to think that these groups in power feel that they can control the media narrative.

If you would like to know what these enlightened persons in Parliament might consider a hate crime. Consider this. Four months ago, NDP MP Leah Gazans presented a motion in the House that “what happened in Canada’s Indian residential schools was genocide” The motion was passed unanimously. She is now proposing that it should be made “a crime to deny genocide occurred” and Marc Miller the Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister says “he’s interested”in such a concept.

Or consider the current Calgary mayor trying to ticket certain types of protests which she says are hate-fuelled, where she she doesn’t like the message, or the Abbotsford school teacher Jim McMurtry who was fired because he said that the residential school deaths were largely attributed to tuberculosis. True of course, but it can longer be said. His wife, Laurie in a letter to the media said “truth, open discourse, and fairness in education has been replaced with myth (propaganda) censorship, and division”.

Censorship of course, has been a topic for hundreds and thousands of years. In recent history censorship by the government in the United States led to the McCarthy “blacklists” against Hollywood producers and writers. In ancient history, in 399 BC Socrates defied attempts by the Athenian state to censor his philosophical teachings and he was accused of “corruption of the Athenian youth”. He was sentenced to death by drinking Hemlock.

There is all forms of censorship; military, corporate, religious and moral. We also have to readily admit that information coming through various social and media outlets is already being privately censored, but there the society mores are dictating what levels of censorship are acceptable– such as the display of violence or child pornography. Even this censorship has led to a great debate in recent weeks, i..e twitter and Elon Musk.

However, it all becomes cynically different when it is a political and government authority that decides that it has the right to control.

Stalin had “sanitization policies” which was a deliberate and systematic alteration of all of history even to the point of ordering the removal of people from pictures, in an attempt to re-write that history. The tearing down of statutes in Canada is not far from this same twisted logic of denying history. Control of the message is the very fundamental building block in the ideology of Stalinism and totalitarianism.

Canadian censorship has seemed to rise up when the governing party develops an acute sensitivity to criticism; or has a particular following to which they wish to appeal. It is coming to be in Canada that to question any wisdom, to question an ideology, or an interest group claim, will be seen in the light of what is being said, but also by who in fact is saying it. The George Orwell famous quote comes to mind: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.

In 1766 Sweden was the first country to abolish censorship by law. Should we be following those long ago Swedes or do you side with this current government which could in the future be given the authority and ability to declare that which can be said. Is this over-stating the intention of this legislation? Maybe, but keep in mind that this is our most fundamental right, and right now we are going in the direction of Stalin– not of Socrates.

Photo courtesy of Allan Henderson via Flickr Commons – Some rights reserved

Shooting down Balloons, Lucki and a ridiculous Judgement

Posted on by Pete Cross

We were all entertained for many days by the strutting six-gun packing Trudeau “ordering” the shooting down of some “spy” balloons over North America. Slow Joe Biden and young gun Trudeau, the 21st century edition of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, the resolute defenders of North America, how can it not be met with a grin and chuckle. The humorists of Instagram, Tik Tok and all the rest had a great deal of fodder to feed the madcap story of these two leaders trying to be the toughest kids on the block.

Newly discovered surveillance weapons flying at 36,000 feet could and maybe should be alarming if it wasn’t so well known that all countries are continually spying on each other. But, it was Trudeaus perceived threat to commercial airspace which has now become Trudeau’s primary reason for his war footing. We also have now found out that these balloons are probably not new, it was simply a matter of someone finally looking for them.

By the way it was an Air Canada pilot who first spotted one of the balloons over Canadian airspace, not the 1980’s NORAD system. The leaders of North America who set their policies according to the pulse of social media, at the time did not know for sure where these cylindrical objects originated from but it was safe to say that the usual black hats Russia and China were behind it. It was a chance for the leaders, both of whom are sagging in the polls to counter their characterizations of being incompetent, or in Joe’s case proving that he was awake. Sometime in the future we will know once all the facts slowly leak out because right now the Americans and the Canadians are saying very little, and right now they can’t find a couple of them.

In any event I was interrupted from this reverie on problems in the stratosphere by the news that Commissioner Lucki, who, like the balloons, was often filled with hot air herself, had in fact finally “resigned”. Bill Blair and Mendocino will no doubt help her pack, so there is no need for calling “Frog Boxes” as they have been waiting outside her office for the last few months. She did last as a Mountie, long after her best before date, but her leaving was clearly predictable and inevitable. The Liberals despite all their grooming of her could she could never make her into the black belt of woke; she tried and tried, but always disappointed them, always apologizing of never being able to deliver.

Many wrote to me asking if I was happy to see her go. To be truthful it was not personal, and I found it to be a bit of a non-event. She was clearly going to be replaced, the bigger and more crucial question is to who comes next?

There were some interesting comments by Brian Sauve as head of the National Police Federation, the union representing the Mounties. He felt that poor Ms. Lucki was going from “crisis to crisis to crisis” and that she was probably hampered by the Covid 19 lockdowns. Yup, Mr. Sauve feels that the lockdowns prevented her from showing off her strongest trait, the ability to speak “face to face”. I am truly beginning to wonder about Mr. Sauve. The blame it on Covid mantra is beginning to wear a little thin out here in the hinterland.

To be fair, he did admit that the Commissioner had trouble distinguishing the political side from the operational side, but the crisis to crisis quote should have more aptly named it the “lie to lie to lie”.

In terms of who next to fill the Liberal dance card, I have no idea. However they will have zero credibility unless they publicly acknowledge that the RCMP, structurally, is in fact badly broken. The person will need to admit that the RCMP needs to be drastically reorganized from the ground up– and they need to declare their vision for the future. Otherwise, get ready for another “crisis to crisis to crisis” over the next few years, which will result in further disintegration of a once proud organization.

There will be a few clues in where the RCMP may be heading once a new head is anointed. Once chosen, if the candidate in their inaugural speech rattle on about “inclusion” and “diversity”; or mention anything being “systemic”; or even the words “going forward” and “working together”– turn off the channel or stop reading. You will only be torturing yourself as you will likely be facing another five years of mind numbing frustration. It has to be admitted that the RCMP is damaged on almost every level and the ship currently is being steered down a path where operational policing has become too far out of view.

While on the topic of being frustrated, the other news that came out in the last 48 hours was the report by Commissioner Judge Rouleau on the institution of the Emergencies Act. His findings were accurately predicted in a previous blog, and he was true to form. The Ottawa born liberal condoned Rouleau, would not go against the government –who were fighting “lawlessness” and “insurrection” by those dastardly Convoy protestors. The Judge took his moment in the sun, to blow some hot air of his own. It took him 2,000 pages in five volumes, including a 273 page “summary” to conclude that “the very high threshold for invocation was met”, and then curiously added about his finding that: “I have done so with reluctance”.

He chose instead to blame the police. Convenient in this era to be sure. All of it could have been avoided he says if it wasn’t for a “series of policing failures” he maintains. In the same breath, he did note that there was a failure of all levels of government for their “failing to rise above politics”. But one never blames the government if you can blame someone else. Like all the residents of Ottawa, Rouleau felt that the situation had become “unsafe and chaotic” –despite all of the government employees working from home and the food delivery services being in full operation. Clearly a government ensconced worker in Ottawa has a different definition of chaos compared to say a person living in and around the downtown east side of Vancouver.

Judge Rouleau admitted that “the factual basis underlying his conclusions was not overwhelming”. Underwhelming in other words, not convincing, yet he apparently remained confident in his findings. He also believed that the institution of the Emergencies Act had a “deterrent effect” for the grand total of seven days that it was in effect. It was ok that bank accounts were frozen by the government in response to what he had also termed “a lawful protest…” .

(There has been an interesting development in the Federal Courts which has ruled that the emails between members of the government during the Emergencies Act imposition should be released to the public. Too late for the Rouleau commission, but it could cause some ruffling of feathers.)

We must also keep in mind that this commission of inquiry was powerless in terms of what it was supposed to judge and to any follow up of his findings. It was a paper exercise, that was necessary because it was dictated by the Act itself.

His conclusion was not accepted by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and others as they said that they disagreed, that the “threshold was not met”. I agree with them. I sat through many hours of testimony and I saw no evidence whatsoever that the threshold for the suspension of civil liberties had in fact been met at any level. The Liberal justification for the imposition boiled down to Minister David Lametti saying that they had a legal opinion, as the Justice Minister, which said that the threshold had been met. Unfortunately he could not tell us what that was, as it was protected by “solicitor client privilege”. This audacious explanation was convincing to Justice Rouleau apparently. The Justice Minister working for Mr Trudeau, in Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, provided to Mr. Trudeau a legal opinion to back up his decision and you the public are not allowed to know on what that opinion was based. That and a civil servant in the Prime Ministers Office who also wrote a cabinet memo how hellfire and brimstone had descended on Wellington street. Ignore the fact that the various police authorities who were on the ground with the protestors, testified that the situation did not meet that threshold.

Justice Rouleau also made 56 recommendations. He wants the CSIS definition inside the Emergencies Act removed. That was the part that the government in power had difficulty explaining away during testimony. According to the CSIS definition which was purposely included in the legislation at the time, it was clear that the definitive threshold was not met. The Judge’s recommendation therefore–get rid of it.

He also recommended, like a true government aficionado, that there was a need to establish another level of government in situations like these, another command centre, and we will call this one the Major Event Management Unit. In watching the proceedings one would not come to the conclusion that what the police agencies needed was another layer of management. Oh, and he also recommended that someone in government should be assigned to the “monitoring and reporting on social media”.

Unfortunately, the Liberals will spin this –that this egregious suspension of human rights in those days of the bouncy castle was justified. Putting a ball cap on the statue of Terry Fox amounted to treason and pointed to insurrection. These same Liberals have now introduced bills to control and moderate the internet. They believe that there is a need to control all of the information that is being fed to the public if they deem it to be “misinformation.” These are indeed dark days for freedom of thought in this country.

By the way if you want to make me Commissioner, I would only want a sole source contract like McKinsey. My first order of business would be to move RCMP HQ and all its inhabitants to Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. The first priority is that we need to stop, at all costs, the enlightened upper class Mounties from breathing that Ottawa air. If the workers don’t want to leave and are clinging to their desks in defiance, then will simply declare the Emergencies Act once again.

Daily briefings by the way, will be held at the local Tim Hortons, where common sense will ultimately be restored, and a sense of the real world will be re-established.

Photo courtesy of Hailey Sani via Flickr and Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Free Speech, not quite as free in policing

Posted on by Pete Cross

As everyone knows, under Section 2 of the Charter of Rights, everyone in Canada has the right to freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. The official document of the Canadian Charter of Rights has as a preamble: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of Law”.

One would think then, at first glance, in consideration of that “supremacy of God” line that you as a person would be free to join the “Church of Trudeau”.

Of course I am not referring to a real church, it is in fact a Youtube site created by and starring one of the police community’s own Brent Lord. However there has been a problem developing inside this pew-less church outside of the fact that Brent is a member of the RCMP currently assigned to Trail detachment. The problem is that it is a satirical site which went after Trudeau, mocking the Liberal policies, concerning all those hot take issues such as the Indigenous, Immigration and the financial spending of the Federal Liberals. Policies which can not be questioned in polite company.

There are two issues at play here, issues which admittedly have surfaced in other forms previously in the policing world. One is the basic rights and freedoms for free speech guaranteed to all Canadians, and the other is the limits that is put on police officers under their Code of Conduct regulations.

When the outraged public complained (this may have been only one person) the Mounties said they did “a fulsome review of the highly unprofessional offending materials was completed and administrative options are being considered”. This statement does not disguise their clear presumptions and equally indicates that their final findings were not ever going to favour the Mountie. But, lets leave that aside. We should also note for the record that the Constable never appeared or represented himself as a police officer on the site. This was a personal site and it was silly, more a rant than a detailed examination of any policies. One would have to question whether the Constable really thought this entertaining, it was political for sure, but whether it met the artistic threshold would be the real debate.

The RCMP in addressing the media said “The website and videos were not representative of the views of the RCMP, nor its employees as a whole, rather they were the expressions of an individual”. True. “The content and the viewpoints on the web site fell far short of meeting the levels of professionalism expected of our officers”. Probably also true, but one has to remember that the “professionalism” expected of our officers is a wandering goal post, not easily defined in this 21st century policing model.

Was Commissioner Lucki being political during the Portapique incident when trying to score some political points with the Liberal hierarchy. Was that “political”, was it “un-professional”? One must ask whether or not if this Constable had put up a supportive site for the Liberal policies and trumpeted the good deeds the Liberals would it have been measured with the same stick. Would have it been considered “un-professional” if instead he had professed a liberal progressive stance? It clearly would have been political but my guess would be that it would not have been declared un-professional. In fact, they may never have addressed the issue at all if it was about diversity or inclusion.

It is truly ironic, that we have reached a stage in this country where the right to free speech is being severely limited by the social progressive or “woke” perspective–a group that would historically have been associated with the rights of individuals and the freedom of expression. The evidence of this censorship is everywhere and it is frightening to anyone who believes that free speech is a right worth protecting. Take a look at the cases of Dr. Mathew Strauss in Kingston, Ontario who proposed some very anti-covid restrictions, or Terry Glavin who wrote an article saying quite obviously that there was no evidence of genocide in the residential schools as none of the grave sites had been examined. Recently Dr Jordan Peterson, who has become a bit of a global phenomena is being pursued by the Ontario College of Psychologists for some tweets he put out. They are ordering that he, the global academic with millions of followers, should undergo “media training”. Laughable, but apparently they are serious and threatening to take away his licence if he does not comply. Of course, it is the fact that he expresses views contrary to the current liberal regimes that have taken over our governments and their institutions that is the real reason they are going after him.

The allegation in all these free speech cases and the people involved that always gets put in the headlines is that they are discriminatory, racist, or un-professional. That is the go-to argument in every case. One person is offended, the world is offended. Stanford University, a school of world renown, in the heart of the California woke culture recently issued their proposed “Elimination of Harmful language Initiative” to address “harmful language in IT”. They found 100 words or phrases that they deemed to be “harmful”. Included are such words as “American” because it was “imprecise it should be “U.S. citizen”. To use the phrase “you guys” was deemed harmful, because it “lumps a group of people using masculine language and/or into gender binary groups which don’t include everyone”. Needless to say, this policy group have drawn some highly critical reviews. All of it simply demonstrates that maybe the pendulum is still swinging to the extreme left.

Closer to home, just today the Vancouver City Police made an announcement concerning the wearing of the “thin blue line badges”. No you can’t they said. These badges, which consist basically of a thin blue line through the red maple leaf insignia has been around since 2016 and seems to have started in Calgary. At that time, the badge was said to “recognize officers length of service to frontline policing duties” and to remember “fallen officers”. Seems like a pretty harmless thing, but apparently some from the very vocal left said that the symbol was being “co-opted by hate organizations in both the U.S. and Canada”. The evidence to back this allegation is weak and historically it was in fact an adaptation of the “thin red line”; which was worn by the red coated members of the Scottish regiment in the British army for standing ground against the Russian “foes”.

When you enter the theatre of the absurd in woke politics, the usual spokespeople surface. Grand Chief Stuart Philip who heads the Union of BC Indian Chiefs says wearing the thin blue line patch was the “equivalent to wearing a swastika”. Also laughable, but he does represent the outer fringe of the progressives and is a media favourite.

Currently if you want to wear the patch as a police officer you would have to join the BC Transit police as they still allow them to be worn. But you know it is only a matter of time before someone makes a complaint on that side of the house as well. Remember, it takes only one person to complain about having been offended.

Taking into consideration the rights of every individual including a police officer I must admit to being still firmly against politics being entrenched in policing. It is difficult to argue against the politicization of the RCMP and other municipal and provincial police agencies at the upper levels of management, which I have done in other blog posts, and then turn around and argue for police officers at the working levels to be allowed to be personally politicized. Politics is politics.

Let us consider and admit that politics is firmly embedded in the current police management culture. Are not the political policies of “inclusion and diversity” being practised in every government venue, by their very definition discriminatory. As a blatant example the CBC recently offered up their “Anti-racism, diversity and Inclusion plan”, which in its affirmative action seeking goals is offering positions in their organization, or training opportunities, to only those deemed to be under-represented. Even the recruitment process of most policing agencies is now in fact one of discrimination. They are based on race or gender and that decision to implement this policy is a political decision at its heart.

Robert Reiner wrote a book in 1985 entitled “The Politics of the Police” which explores all the problems that are intertwined when the police get political. Jack Young, a British sociologist described the police and politics as being “terrible twins”. Politics and the principle of free speech is indeed a difficult issue, not easily defined in the policing world. We are living in an age when police officers are being offered up greater freedoms in terms of health, clothing, and even grooming, while at the same time they are trying to further limit the right to speech and opinion. The upper levels do not seem to have any problem with the RCMP management in Surrey celebrating and supporting the politics of Brenda Locke, who is trying to restore the Mounties in Surrey, but these same managers do not want you to wear a badge which many regard as simply supporting fallen officers.

Wendell Holmes a famous jurist while on the Massachusetts Supreme Court said in 1892 that “a cop has a constitutional right to talk politics but no constitutional right to be a cop”. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed stating that police officers right to free speech was a “narrower free speech right”. Police officers “should not be able to make statements in their personal capacity that undermine their ability to maintain the trust of the community they serve” according to the RCMP policy.

There are extreme viewpoints at both ends of the spectrum. There was a picture recently of a police officer in Miami wearing a support Trump mask while patrolling a polling booth. Clearly this should not be allowed as you can easily draw the straight line from support to intimidation. But if cops are participating as members of the general public and are speaking out on “matters of public concern” it gets a little stickier.

There have been 13 off duty cops who were protesting the recent U.S election and participated in the march on Capitol Hill. All have been suspended or charged. Put aside all the anti-Trump bias, should police officers be allowed to march in a political protest? Should an off-duty officer be allowed to march in a Black Lives Matter march? Or a march in support of the LGBTQ community? Make no mistake about it, they would be both political marches, both are political commentary. My guess is that there would be no action taken. In fact don’t the police try to get into every Gay Pride parade wearing their full uniform and it is applauded by every news site and mainstream politician. On the other hand, the RCMP is investigating officers who supported the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. Clearly it depends on which side of the political spectrum one lands as to whether you are going to be in hot water with your bosses. The politically held views of the Convoy protestors were on the wrong side of the political spectrum not to mention on the wrong end of the Emergencies Act.

I’m not a betting man, but I firmly believe that most police officers are not in favour of Mr. Trudeau and his cohorts policy decisions and initiatives. However, they are not allowed to express those opinions publicly and they were smart enough not to join the “Church of Trudeau”. Do you remember when the Police Chiefs in the United States supported candidate Trump.

Clearly, everyone’s outrage or lack of outrage depends on the current and direction of the political winds. Clearly, police officers, in the course of their duties need to maintain some level of neutrality, their whole reason for being and the core of their support depends on the appearance of fairness and a balanced viewpoint. It is just hard for the ground level to understand this when their supervisors and heads of their organizations have become extensions of their political masters. Freedom of speech and the practise of it are the most fundamental of rights. We must preserve it, guard it, and use it wisely. And it needs to apply to everyone in policing.

Photo via Flickr Commons courtesy of Newtown grafitti – Some Rights Reserved.