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.

2023 ready or not, here we come…

Posted on by Pete Cross

Well we made it to another year. Congratulations. Making it to this point is a good thing.

In our last post we looked back, now we are being encouraged to look forward. We are of course relieved to hear that Justin is back from Jamaica; refreshed, no issues with baggage or told to lie down on the airport floor for a couple of days while the airline tries to figure things out. The fact that there was a state of emergency in that country did not impair him from strolling the beach taking the odd selfie, patently oblivious to most anything back in Canada.

The Governor General has “hope in her heart” for we Canadians. Is that relevant to anyone? Or are we more interested in Harry and Meaghan and the stress that life brings these poor unfortunates? One can only assume that the Governor General’s New Years resolution includes cutting back on flight meals to Europe.

Forgive me if I take a larger look, beyond the borders of the usual policing issues. What is on the horizon for “we the people”? Honestly, at first blush, it does not look to be that exciting of a year ahead of us;, although most of us might accept a certain level of dull, a year free from the drama of the past couple of years.

To listen to the Prime Minister and his cohorts, all is good in Canada and our future prosperity is guaranteed. Nothing is “broken” and we should all just be thankful to be heading into a banner year led by such a dynamic family of politicians on the Federal, Provincial and Municipal levels. Calling us “broken” is where Mr. Trudeau says he puts his foot down, that is where he says the Conservatives have crossed over the line. He is such a half full guy.

Locally, the RCMP Mounties and the officers of the Surrey police service should very shortly hear the decision of the Provincial government as to whether they carry-on with the transition to the Surrey Police Service, or return to the tried and true Mounties. It would seem completely illogical for them to dismantle the current Surrey Police Service at this stage of the game and the argument being put forward by Surrey Council simply does not hold water. The recent dramatic announcement and twisting of the figures by Mayor Brenda Locke is meant to raise fear and it is based on the belief that most Surrey taxpayers are not very bright. But this is politics and a decision to be made by new Premier Eby in British Columbia. He who has been on a massive drive to raise his profile with almost daily good deed announcements and promises to spend more. Any person in that position is only looking at the problem from one angle–whether the policing controversy will hurt him or help him politically? When a politician is in those circumstances, no one can accurately predict the outcome.

A burning question (well, maybe thats an exaggeration) is whether Commissioner Lucki will resign this year. It is truly remarkable that she has managed to keep her job for this long. Maybe she should run for the Chief’s job of the Ottawa City Police? One of her favoured Deputies, Superintendent Lesley Ahara, is in the running I am told. Ahara is apparently a fan and a favourite of Commissioner Lucki. It would be hard to believe that the Ottawa city police would be considering a Mountie for the job after all the fallout from the Emergencies Act and Portapique. But again, this is being decided in the whisperings of the diverse and inclusive back room’s of the illuminated Ottawa.

There is some interesting legislation which will come under scrutiny this year. Bill C-92 which will give Indigenous the rights to create their own child welfare system, their own family policies and in fact even their own laws pertaining to child welfare, is now being challenged. The Act is already implemented and underway, with five Indigenous bodies asserting their control over child and family services. However, it is now being challenged, and it is making its way to the Supreme Court of Canada because of Provincial opposition. So far, Quebec, Alberta, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories have all joined in opposition to the legislation.

One needs to understand the enormity of this issue. Currently, as of 2021 –53. 8% of all children in the child welfare system were made up of Inuit, First Nations and Metis children. The logistical issues of the Indigenous taking over responsibility for these children is overwhelming, and in fact on a local level could prove dangerous to children, as they swap culture for safety. Of course, as always, it is part of a larger issue for the Indigenous. They are translating this and seeing this as a “watershed moment for Indigenous self-government in Canada”. The opposing Provinces are arguing, that the Indigenous simply do not have jurisdiction under the Constitution, that this is in fact under Provincial purview. Should the left leaning Supreme Court go along with the Indigenous broader self-government it will in effect re-shape the constitution of this country. Quebec went for independence and we fought them mightily. The Indigenous in a hazy, unspecific and disorganized way are trying to achieve the same level of independence, but this time with the aid of a Federal liberal government consumed with being on the side of the righteous and apparently willing to have the taxpayers of the country finance this independence. We should all be paying attention.

In February this year we will hear from Judge Paul Rouleau and the Emergencies Act Inquiry or the Public Order Emergency Commission as they like to call it. We will as well get the results of the Commission of Inquiry, or what they like to call the Mass Casualty Commission into Portapique. Neither of these reports will be a good or positive thing for policing in general, especially for the Mounties in Portapique and the Ottawa City Police during the convoy protest. One should not get overly concerned however. There will be a lot of hoopla headings when they are released, but it is highly un-likely and improbable that anyone will be held to account. Both investigative groups seem more intent on comforting rather than elucidating. All the named groups will promise to carry on–with the usual accompanying promise to do better.

The Canada Revenue Agency will in the next year probably not collect any of the “suspicious” $24.7 billion paid out for Covid. The Auditor General has alerted them to it, they just don’t know how they are going to get it back. The evidence suggests that the political popularity of the Liberals overrode any fiscal responsibility at the time. When questioned– the first response is always how “quickly” they got the money out, the political equivalent of throwing out cash instead of candy in the Santa Claus parade.

Bill C-21 dealing with the firearms regulations, will continue to be discussed in this coming year, as the Liberals try to position themselves politically to “fine tune” the legislation. Their original legislation was poorly thought out, another knee-jerk reaction to a headline, and it was not long before someone pointed at some obvious flaws despite all their “consultations”. It would appear that this Liberal government who feels that they have the inside track when it comes to what is good for us, felt no need to approach and consult with groups like farmers and hunters. In Liberal progressive circles, those individuals are known as the “unenlightened”. Now they have a real mess, a detailed mess which most people would never understand if forced to read the actual legislation.

It is also a foregone conclusion for the coming year that every storm and every strong wind will be referred to in 2023 as “climate change related”. Whether they are right or not, is not for discussion, Greta Thunberg tell us it is so. Greta, now a learned 19 years of age, was the youngest Time Person of the Year in 2019. So how could this teenager be mistaken? Mind you they had also named Donald Trump as Person of the Year in 2016.

Will we have a Federal election in 2023? It seems unlikely. The economy is souring, Mr. Jagmeet Singh is still in danger politically and needs to buy as much time as he can. It was only a little over a year ago that Trudeau thought he would ride in to a majority as the saviour of Covid, the dispenser of funds, the provider of masks, the overseer of the greatest needle use in the country outside the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. But he only ended up with another minority government. It would not seem advisable to swing for the fences again. Singh is unlikely to develop a backbone over the next 12 months.

Of course an over-riding story of interest to mainstream Canada is the economy. Inflation appears to be still out of control and the Bank of Canada is now going to try and repress the worst inflation in the last 40 years. It seems highly likely that this squeezing will cause a recession, it is just a matter of how deep of one. Which for the workers at the lower echelon will not be a good thing. Government workers will be fine as will the high paid executive levels of this country, who never seem to take a hit, or can at least re-structure themselves around the problem. The number of government workers expanded during these last few years, and almost all have by now been given pay raises. The grocery chains, the banks, and the oil industry will continue into 2023 trying to put a spin on how they achieved record profits during this time of enforced austerity. The average person in this country will continue to not be able to buy a house, or travel, or eat beef. If you are lucky and have a house, the people, especially in the east of this country may not be able to heat that home, as the government pursues their carbon tax agenda.

I think we should expect some serious outrage in the months to come.

There will be three Provincial elections this year; in Alberta, P.E.I, and Manitoba. If anyone cares there will also be a gathering of the Green Party in Manitoba. Meanwhile the Sovereign Act in Alberta is driving the progressives wild. Therefore, Trudeau will be hoping that Danielle Smith loses in the Manitoba election– so that he will not have to go face-to-face with the U.C.P. Smith, for her part seems to be itching for a fight.

The biggest story in 2023 will remain the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Putin seems determined to re-build the former USSR and he has played to the weaknesses of the west, initially taking over Crimea without a whimper. Ukranians are putting up a determined and deadly fight to retain their relatively new found freedoms and to avoid once again coming under the oppressive regime of the Soviet Union. As people die in horrendous fashion, on both sides, we must always remember that first and foremost– this is a war like all wars. It is a political war and in this 21st century that war is also being fought on social media.

Ukraine could not win this war on its own, it needs others, and they need to win the social media wars as much as the war on the ground. They need to continue to convince the west that they are the vanguard in holding back Putin and his conspiratorial plans to overtake all of Eastern Europe. To do so, they want into NATO, because a clause in NATO would mandate that the NATO nations would thus have to join the war thereby forcing all the NATO nations to take up the military option. It is indeed scary to consider Putin winning, but it may be equally scary if Ukraine manages to pull all the others into the war. Meanwhile, other countries are now the economic and political hostages. At the controls, the ones who are able to pull the levers, there is the aging and often senseless Joe Biden, a former stand up comic in Zelensky and a former KGB officer in Putin.

The Western media has fully endorsed Ukraine and the countries of the West. Rightly so. The Russians were the ones that started it. But it should always raise concern and be suspicious when we are being exposed to the herd news mentality which is now pervading the West. There is no counter-narrative being suggested or sought out. Putin is evil, Zelensky is good. Russians are committing atrocities, Ukraine is not. But this conflict is more complicated and conflicted than one that can be boiled down to a single aphorism.

Their internal histories go back centuries, not just since Ukraine won their independence. This war like all wars is heavily layered and being fought over economic power, political power, oil interests and military ports. It is being fought to re-draw boundaries and the control of riches; boundaries which have been re-drawn over the centuries several times. Neither side is willing to compromise, although in the end you know someone will have to compromise.

The poor and the uneducated, who are the ones usually enlisted to fight all wars, will continue to fight. Both sides of political leaders will bring up images of patriotism to spur on their troops and try to gain an upper hand in public approbation. Those fighting will face dying a horrifying death, and their family units will continue to be dis-membered and crushed. Nothing good can ever come of this war, which now seems destined to go throughout 2023 — no one should be cheerleading this war.

The war serves only one good purpose and that is to diminish the scope of our problems in Canada.

As our hospitals struggle unable to cope with an influx of flu cases, as winter storms completely disintegrate our airline and transportation infrastructure for days at a time, as unwanted pieces of legislation get pushed forward, as our food bills increase and those on fixed incomes watch their savings diminish, I can not possibly forecast a good or great year.

Admittedly, I’m more of a glass half empty person.

Photo courtesy of Ron Frazier via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Defining Terrorism

Posted on by Pete Cross

If you have been drawn to the Emergencies Act Commission in recent days, you would have seen that finally, we are now getting into the nitty-gritty of Ottawa backroom politics. There has been a delay in this blog as I dutifully awaited to finally hear from the grand master himself, Mr. Trudeau. These are the persons who determined that Ottawa was under “siege” and “occupation” and that the implementation of the Emergencies Act was in their view, sound judgement. They are the ultimate masters of circle talk, the power members who reply to questions with some combination of condescension and frustration as they try to explain what only they can see. A frowning Freeland, a puffed up Montecino, the arrogant Lametti, and the actor Trudeau, all in agreement with their righteous stance that what they did was both justified, and in fact the right thing to do. In their political view, the convoy, and the blockades was causing “threats to the security of Canada that are so serious as to be a national emergency”.

Their evidence of those beliefs is clearly inflated but not fully revealed, as it remains hidden behind cabinet confidentiality or because of client solicitor privilege as in the case of Justice Minister Lametti. They clearly struggled with their rationale, unable to point to what caused them to come to this belief. When confronted with the exact words used in the Act, which were lifted from the CSIS definition– that there must be “serious evidence against people or property, espionage, foreign interference, or an intent to overthrow the government by violence” they are stuck. You can physically watch them spin their mental wheels in the mud of the face of actual detailed fact . CSIS themselves of course testified said that they did not find any evidence to meet the criteria. Freeland argued that the Americans, in not getting their auto parts on time from Windsor was sufficiently damaging to the economy of the country and the reputation of the country, that she felt that it constituted a national emergency and a threat to Canadian society. She also related how the Biden government was concerned and that they needed to do something because they had been told by the Americans that they needed to do something. She did not know how to answer the fact that the blockade on the Windsor bridge was removed prior the implementation of the Act.

Is it possible then that the use of airhorns and the illegal parking of trucks was stretched in definition by the Liberals, to include a convoy of truckers protesting a vaccine mandate? In essence were they a terrorist group? Were they trying to overthrow the government? It defies the imagination, but alas, this is Ottawa, a city filled with cocoon like towers of Federal bureaucrats, all huddled in their cubicles, normally free from outside concerns. In this world they speak their own progressive lingo (a terrorist is an IMVE – Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist), they are intolerant of those with differing opinions, safe in knowing that they and only they know what is best for the country, as they spend their lunch hours wandering Sparks St Mall looking for a cheap Chipotle lunch. They are for the most part safe from dissent, or at least the dissent of the unwashed, and they are never threatened with such things as job security, or the possibility of someone living amongst their midst with callused hands and poor manners. Marco Mendocino stated that this group was traumatizing the working from home residents–the “residents are terrorized” he exclaimed early during the protest. Lametti thought maybe they should use tanks. Although he says he was just joking in the email. He felt scared to the point that he re-located to the safe confines of Montreal. They came to a decision early on that these heathens needed to be removed, along with their children and pets who were apparently part of this un-controllable siege, who according to Trudeau were using the children as protection. Freeland said it was like playing “wack-a-mole” trying to control the discontented from rising up. Trudeau testified today he was frustrated by a lack of a plan by the police, and then was confronted under cross- examination with a 73 page plan that was distributed before the Emergencies Act imposition. You may also be interested to know that the Liberal government discussed the Emergency Plan and using it during COVID.

There was lots of testimony heard about the lack of a need for the Emergencies Act from the police and others. That it was not needed nor was it requested. However, political necessity always overrides fact, especially amongst this apparently now quivering group of Cabinet members. They wanted to do something and they were clearly having bad dreams about the American events of January 6th in Washington. But, they needed to be coached through this, someone who gave credence to their plan for implementation.

Along comes 40 year civil servant, Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council Office, who writes a memo to the gathered group of senior ministers in which she states: ” the public unrest is being felt across the country…which may provide further momentum to the movement and lead to irreparable harms–including social coercion, national unity and Canada’s international reputation” She goes on to say that this “fits with the statutory parameters of the Emergencies Measures Act”. Of course it doesn’t, but again why let the facts get in the way, and she gives us a hint as to the psychological incentive for the Act when she says: “god help us if we have another January 6th”. If you analyze the words of this statement it gets even a little more Orwellian. She feels the act is warranted because she is worried about “social coercion” to a non-Liberal sanctioned cause, namely the vaccine mandates. As far as Canada’s international reputation, she may want to speak directly to the Prime Minister about having hallway chats with the Chinese leadership. But that is for another time. Trudeau says that the Charette memo was “essential” in his decision.

When grilled as to the fact that none of the reporting agencies felt that the protest was a national emergency, Charette said that her job and the job of the government was to look at the “totality of the circumstances”, that even though there was no “specific site”, no “specific actor”, it was the movement itself which had her perturbed. The movement apparently in her reasoning was a monster all by itself, it breathed life on its own, it was not made up of individuals. She did say though, in her memo, that the use of the Emergencies Act “could be challenged”. Apparently even this non-lawyer knew she was skirting and widening the legal definition. But her pronouncement was apparently enough for the cowering politicos, who a couple of hours after the Cabinet meeting, decided that the Emergencies Act should be implemented.

But let’s assume she was right– and the charges against Tamara Lich and Chris Barber for mischief, and counselling mischief, and the 3000 parking tickets met the requirements to justify the use of this militarized piece of legislation. If one accepts this to be the case, then let’s compare the Ottawa convoy to something which happened in a lonely part of northern British Columbia.

Approximately 60 kms south west of Houston, B.C. there is a Forest Service Road which if you go up about 60 kms, you will find the the Coastal Gas Link pipeline being built by TC Energy. At this particular location, the $6.6 billion pipeline, which has been approved by all levels of government, goes under the Morice river.

But there is a problem. This particular area is also described as “sacred land” by the Wet’suwt’en First Nation. This particular “un-ceded area” to which they claim is made up of 22,000 square kilometres of land, and is “overseen” by no less than six elected Band Councils. However, the problem is that even though the Band Councils approved the pipeline (with the usual amount of economic incentives given to them) the “hereditary chiefs” of the Wet’suwt’en were not in agreement.

On February 17, 2022 about 20-30 white camouflaged hooded individuals decided to take matters into their own hands. These masked individuals came up the Marten Forest Service Road, in the middle of the night, carrying axes, fire sticks, an even a cordless angle grinder, used to cut through the security gates. Another similar group was attacking from the other end, closer to the Morice River drill pad, where an overnight crew was preparing the site.

The security guard in his truck was immediately attacked, windows broken out of his vehicle and axes swung at his vehicle, one which such force that it ended up in the back seat of the vehicle. He tried to escape, but the road was blocked, so he came back and was once again attacked. They then also tried to torch the back of the vehicle. The group continued with their rampage, smashing heavy machinery beyond repair, remote buildings were gutted, and bulldozers pushed on to their sides. The local RCMP was called shortly after midnight and began the journey up the forest service road. At kilometre 41 the road was blocked with tar covered stumps, wire, boards with spikes, tarps and lit fires. Some of the attackers were there as well and began throwing smoke bombs and fire lit sticks at the police. One officer was injured in stepping on a spiked board. Once past this roadblock, another 2 kms up the road, an old school bus was being used to block the road. By the time they reached the actual site of the attack, millions of dollars in damage had been done. The pictures are self-explanatory.

In the words of the then C/Supt of the RCMP Warren Brown was that this was a “calculated and organized attack”.

Of course this was not the first attack, nor are the primary suspects in these matters hidden, in fact they are hiding in plain sight.

In 2020 protestors who supported the Hereditary Chiefs, calling themselves the “Land Defenders”, blocked the work site for 59 days, and finally after receiving an injunction and an eviction notice were then forced to leave, but they did not go willingly, another police action was warranted and/or in the words of the CBC, thirty people were “violently arrested”.

In November 2021, again the protestors attacked the site, commandeering heavy equipment, trenching the road surfaces, and erecting blockades. About 500 employees were stranded and unable to leave the site.

More recently on October 26, 2022 there was an arson attack in Smithers, B.C., in the parking lot of the Sunshine Inn. A total of eight vehicles were burned, four RCMP cruisers, along with four other vehicles which included a BC Hydro truck and an ambulance. One of the RCMP vehicles was marked with the “C-IRG”. The RCMP have set up a uniform contingency group to patrol the areas, their vehicles identified by the “C-IRG” on their vehicles, who are there to safeguard from any further “energy industry incidents”. This is the hotel that the police usually stay at when working the security patrols for the pipeline. The mayor of Smithers, Mayor Atrill, admitted that there was a “temptation in the community to ascribe the crime to conflict…over the pipeline”.

So up to this date, it is currently estimated that over $275 million in economic damages have been sustained in attacks on this build of the critical national infrastructure. The RCMP at the time felt that they had identified one or two of the suspects in the axe attacks, but currently no one has been charged, even though the RCMP claim that they have had forty officers involved in the investigation. There remain no leads, nor any confirmations of the funding or methods of the attackers.

The Band councils after the axe attack at the site said: “we call on those who are inviting violent non-Wet’suwet’en people into our territories to withdraw their invitations”. A curious wording to be sure, and one could interpret this as an admission that they are aware of the suspects while at the same time saying it is not them.

Are they concerned about the economic damages? Not really. They are concerned about that this attack “…should not have any ongoing investigations negatively impact their ability to carry out their traditional practises or limit access to their territories”.

Much more recently there was a fire in Montreal in a residential driveway, where a Jaguar and a Land Rover were burned. The home was owned by Royal Bank of Canada, Michael Fortier. RBC has been involved in the financing of the pipeline, although one can only surmise that it ties into the pipeline issue.

So let’s compare Ottawa to the events in northern B.C.

What is the most terroristic act?

Could we get the Liberal cabinet ministers together for another meeting, like the one in Ottawa, and let them decide whether this set of circumstances meets the criteria for another declaration of the Emergencies Act. In northern B.C. the police clearly are being stymied, they have no other avenues of investigation left open to them, unlike they did in Ottawa. The attacks are national in scope, there are claims being made for their own governments to replace the current existing authorities, it is violent, it is causing economic harm, and it is attack on the basic infrastructure of the economy.

If the government invoked the Emergency Measures Act in Northern B.C. , maybe they could freeze the assets of the Wet’suwet’en until such time as the Bands could come forward with a more co-operative effort and a list of the suspects.

Of course, one knows this is not going to happen. Let us not mince words. There is a Go-Free card that the Indigenous pull out at every opportunity in the Canadian monopoly game. This includes the breaking of the laws of this country and committing acts of “terror”. They have been over-stepping the bounds of the law for quite some time now, and they continue to do so with impunity.

The only explanation for this is that they are the Justin Trudeau’s cause, so much so that Lametti when asked by the Indigenous lawyer representative at the Commission as to future possible use of the Emergencies Act, said they would look at including the Indigenous in the any future decision making process when in judgement as to what constitutes an act of insurrection and a future use of the Emergencies Act.

It is said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The Indigenous are the freedom fighters, the convoy members are the terrorists. It’s all in the definition.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by Ross Dunn – Some Rights Reserved

Is the World spinning Faster?

Posted on by Pete Cross

Policing issues and the stories that surround it seem to be growing exponentially, always accompanied by surrounding commentary and self-proclaimed expertise flowing from every social platform. Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter abound with the examination of the police and a professed expertise. The armchair investigators of Netflix are in full voice. In trying to understand why, I have learned that In the last few years the earths rotation has in fact been speeding up (on a normal day the earth travels at the speed of 1000 miles per hour as measured at the equator). So as I find my eyes ricocheting from headline to commission to judicial decision, blaming the earth’s rotation as being responsible is as likely an answer as any other.

In the past week to ten days we have had the start up of the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa; we have learned that 469 foreign criminals are “missing” according to the CBSA; two officers were killed in answering a domestic dispute in Ontario, ambushed by a male with an AK-47; and an Ontario court Judge has ruled that if you are an Indigenous offender you are not allowed to be cross-examined as to any previous offences. So now not only do you have the Gladue decision, you know have it dictated that the Indigenous are not to be subjected to the same trial process.

Closer to home, in the Surrey civic election the old dodger with the sore foot, McCallum, has been replaced by an equally woefully inadequate Brenda Locke. In the first 48 hours, she has already painted herself into a corner, by saying she is giving the Mounties back their job in Surrey, regardless of reality and cost.

So having to choose one story over another is difficult this week. That being said, as much as I would rather ignore it, I guess we will have to go with the Public Order Emergency Commission as the lead story, which is being headed by the Honourable Judge Paul Rouleau. This Commission (we have sure had our share of them lately) has been tasked with understanding “the Government’s decision to declare a public emergency, the circumstances that led to that declaration, and the effectiveness of the measures selected by the Government to deal with the then-existing situation”. As in all Commissions of Inquiry, one needs to be reminded that none of this is to determine criminal fault or civil liability. This is all to determine the “effectiveness” of the implementation of this draconian piece of legislation.

And like all good government Commissions, this too is filled with lawyers of every stripe and denomination: there are two co-lead counsel, five senior counsel, three regional counsel, twelve just “counsel”, three senior policy advisors, seven research counsel, and two “staff”. So including the Judge, there are thirty-two counsel and that is just on the government side of the ledger. The audience at these hearings will be for the most part other lawyers and the media. With this many lawyers there is diminishing hope that the truth behind the declaration of the emergencies act will not be watered down through all these filtering lawyers.

Judge Rouleau is a native of the Ottawa area, went to the University of Ottawa and then went on to be associated with several central Canadian legal firms such as Heenan Blaikie and Cassels Brock and Blackwell. He has been a Judge since 2002 and a strong advocate for French language rights, and would have probably been a better candidate for the Supreme Court than the new Justice O’Bansawin–but let’s put that aside for now.

The good Judge will be overseeing the evidence of sixty five potential witnesses, however do not despair and give up on your regular life schedule, as it is likely that you only need to begin to pay serious attention to the last twenty or so witnesses– which include the politicians such as Trudeau and Freeland. After all, the police have already established that they did not ask for the Emergencies Act, it has also been established that there was no real intelligence indicating that there was a foreign inspired threat in the makeup of the convoy group, nor conspiracies to commit violence, which should leave the Commission with some rather obvious starting points. There is going to be a lot of dancing to be sure. Commissioner Lucki has already done the two step in public committee hearings, where she was forced to admit to not having asked for the implementation of the Emergencies Act. As a devotee to Blair and company, she needed to backtrack, and she did this by saying what a great thing it was, once they had been given these extra powers. Justin Trudeau who spoke publicly about “foreign money” was clearly lying as the intelligence community today said there was no such evidence.

One should also remember that the government is not holding this hearing because they wish to be frank and forthright to the Canadian public, it is because the law states that they have to have an inquiry within 60 days after the enactment of the Emergencies Act. This particular group of Liberals are not fans of focused scrutiny, whether it is in the House of Commons question period or in front of a Commission. They have released some Cabinet documents but have raised “confidence” issues on them; so the general public may never be shown them.

In checking out a Commission it is always helpful to find out who has been given “standing” and “funding” in terms of appearing before the Commission, which simply put, is based on who has a direct and vital interest in the proceedings. So in this case, groups such as the Criminal Lawyers Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ottawa Coalition of Residents and Businesses line up for standing, and of course for the government to pay for it. These three groups were in fact granted both permission and funding.

However, there was some rather unusual decisions in this regard. Take the case of Mr. Eros who applied for “standing”. Mr. Eros is a CPA and dealt with financing and accounting matters related to the Convoy Group. He was also intricately involved in the administration of the crowd-funding campaign with this same Convoy group. He was however denied standing, as the Judge ruled that he was merely a “witness”. This may be fair.

However, incredibly, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs was granted “standing” and “funding” to participate in this matter. They argued that they had a substantial and “direct interest in the commission” based on its “role as an umbrella organization representing Indigenous governments” and that it plays a “critical role in governance in Canada in terms of its ensuring that other governments are held accountable for their actions”. Some of you may be surprised at their being Indigenous “governments” in Canada. However, to think that they are there to hold the other “governments” accountable is audacious to say the least, even under the current Federal Liberal love-in regime. So we now have a group who has supported its share of protests, such as the damaging of pipelines and the burning of rail lines which is now going to sit in judgement of the governments reaction to the Ottawa convoy.

The witness testimony has started and began with the bubble wrapped represented citizens of Ottawa talking about the nights of continuous air horns, the disruption of their businesses and the “occupation” of Ottawa. Terms are being bandied about such as a “siege” and a “horrific experience”. The lead plaintiff in the civil suit Zexi Li, is a data analyst, and the second witness. She was working for the government from home and her testimony was how it completely disrupted her life, a story which under cross-examination was by no means dramatic. Most of the city of Ottawa were at this time working from home.

In the last few days the Commission has now started to examine some of the government and police response, before, during and after this clearly “unprecedented” upheaval. What would you expect to find when you have three levels of government; the city, the Province of Ontario, and the Federal Government all weighing in on strategy and tactics with three different police forces, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Ottawa City Police, and the RCMP? Now consider the Ottawa mayor who liked to have confidential discussions with Trudeau, Blair, and Mendocino, but not share those discussions with the Ottawa Police Services Board who supposedly were the designated oversight to the operations. There were Provincial and Federal concerns with the OPSB itself. Then throw in the new Ottawa Police Chief who with the other police managers from the other jurisdictions could not even agree on a “command structure” for several days. Throw in a request for 1800 Ontario Provincial officers, while at the same time consider the initial lacklustre involvement of the RCMP, and then consider an inability to even develop a policing “operational plan” for over 10 days.

Needless to say it was all bureaucracy, miscalculation and the very definition of too many cooks in the kitchen. Bill Blair was suggesting to the Ottawa Chief that he consider more bylaw enforcement, even though by that time 2000 bylaw tickets had been issued. I am sure he thanked Mr. Blair profusely. Justin Trudeau was busting on Doug Ford not doing enough, while at the same time, the OPP seemed to be the best at getting extra officers to the scene. Chief Slolys then resigned. With little doubt he was about to become the scape goat in this massive cockup.

The enacting of the act seems quite clearly to have been a reaction to a discombobulated police management action brought created by a lack of foresight and intelligence gathering, combined with meddling by the usual political group which surfaces in any calamity. It was done for the singular purpose of gaining a political upper hand in the media, to show that they were doing something, and it was concocted by the Federal government and the Liberal ruling party.

The core or the fuel for this action seems to been an inherent inability on the part of the liberal left to relate to the protestors driving these big trucks. They were seen as the working class, the blue collars. This was more than a paper exercise to the protestors. They had lost jobs and the ability to feed their families, and now they were being ignored and pushed to the sidelines. They were at times crude and in your face, willing to physically push back, but their cause was the centre of their existence. This was not a philosophical theory dealing with “systemic” complaints, theirs was a cause that affected their mortgage and their ability to make a living. They were not bubble-wrapped, did not speak in plural pronouns, and did not understand or adhere to the niceties of government levels and protocols. They were not from Ottawa, they did not look like they belonged there, they were not Liberal constituents, and most troubling of all– they drove very big immovable trucks.

So when they got to Ottawa, no one would talk to them, no one even liked them, and they needed to go, at any cost. It was hurting the images of the politicians in power. And the media were willing to report it without question or due diligence.

The protestors prevailed as long as they did because they were met with an unprepared and ill-equipped police force, governed by layers and layers of Ottawa political mandarins concerned only with optics. The politicians found themselves facing, according to the Ottawa mayor’s chief of staff, a “crescendo of collapsing confidence”.

They were also scared. They did not understand and could not relate to the visceral outpourings of the protestors. Their problems were not their problems. So this “local emergency” demanded in their view, the full force of government, the suspension of their inherent rights, and the seizure of their personal financial assets– and now they will be lying to justify it.

Photo courtesy of Ross Dunn via Flickr Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Reflections from a distance

Posted on by Pete Cross

Recently, this blogger had the opportunity to leave this country for a couple of weeks. For me, usually a time to re-generate one’s faith in the greater good, to re-gain some perspective on the news items of the day, to adjust one’s vision on Canada and where it fits into the world. It is somewhat naive in this day and age to think that one can totally escape from the digital blather, there is no real way to hide the constant onslaught and the insistent reminders from “back home”.

So as I found myself maneuvering through the various airport security systems, my ArriveCan app firmly embedded in my phone, there continued the never-ending notifications on flights and flight times, the constant beep of information headlines coming from my pocket wanting to make sure you haven’t missed a minute of the breaking news that was washing over this country, as if I was of some importance, and the need for me to have the information vital to my survival. The first headline was the airport itself.

As I stood in the never-ending line of wannabe “check-in” passengers, I was increasingly thankful that I was not flying through Toronto, where Pearson International has apparently turned into a rugby scrum played in the middle of thousands of un-claimed Samsonites. Canada now stands proudly number one in the world in something– cancelled flights and late arrivals.

The “at least” three hour check-in times are of course ridiculous, but the airline industry has for a number of years put passengers at the lowest end of the priority scale. They have made it seem that the client relationship had been inverted. We were there to please them our job was to be thankful that they are taking us anywhere. They have expanded the numbers of seats but in ever-increasingly small planes and the joy and excitement of flying has now officially been replaced by a feeling of herded cattle being moved through the gates of the abattoir.

Then of course there is the fact that the Federal government group who was responsible for security screening at Canada’s airports had not “anticipated” that a shortage of staff and a pent up demand for travel could result in a strain on the system. Maybe working from home made them numb to the exertions of the general working public. In any event, I dutifully strapped on the mask for a number of hours, as the tv monitors in the airport displayed the twice infected Trudeau on his private plane, skipping through Europe with Melanie Joly and Anita Anand into the latest NATO meetings.

I did not of course have the luxury of travelling with the entourage of the Governor General, who although she does not speak both official languages, is clearly well versed in the language of Federal government largesse. She apparently served up three dinners, breakfasts, lunches and snacks while en route to Kuwait to electrify the troops with her presence. I had a bottle of water and some cheese and crackers.

The next breaking news item concerned the beleaguered and battered Commissioner of the RCMP, who seems to trip every time she goes public. Commissioner Lucki is truly turning into an embarrassment, possibly only outdone by Minister Bill Blair the senior party member in that Cabinet of high schoolers that Trudeau has brought together. She and Blair continue their Abbott and Costello routine of who’s on first –in terms of who is telling the truth and who is lying. Clearly they are both lying.

Does anyone in the country believe that Supt. Campbell made up the notes? It would be a weird thing to make up, whereas it would not be hard to believe that Lucki was given orders to release some information on the investigation that would assist the government in their proposed gun legislation. The timing was perfect after all; a perfectly timed mass shooting had the government salivating over how to score some political points; a chance to illustrate how dedicated the government is in protecting us from ourselves.

Clearly, the need to please her Liberal masters was front and centre in Lucki’s less than savvy mind. A clear feat of insensitivity considering the subject matter of the meeting. The fact that Campbell’s notes were not in the first disclosure package to the Commission, and then were found in a second package will bring out all the conspiracy theorists. One will need to tune in next month’s public hearing where one will be able to watch Lucki try to dance on the head of a pin. Expect riveting well coached explanations such as “It was a tense discussion..my need for information should have been weighed against the seriousness of the circumstances”.

Politics of course often gets pulled in and over an investigation in the policing world, the more high profile the investigation the more the pull for politicians. I experienced it on a couple of files, as did many of my colleagues. One has to be strong to withstand what is sometimes incredible pressure. She is clearly not strong. So the revelation that she was trying to score some points for the Liberals, should not be surprising, she simply just got caught at it. It needs to be admitted that the RCMP Commissioner role is by its very nature, half politician and half police officer. It is a fine line that needs to be walked if one is to enjoy any level of success. Strong principles are paramount to that success. She is not principled.

This incident has put on full display he one dimensional style of leadership and underlined her lack of credibility with the RCMP membership. It is a glaring illustration of how she managed to get to the highest job in the Mounties and how she got there with little understanding of an investigation or the characteristics of an investigation. If the foot soldiers in the Mounties had felt any kind of loyalty to her, that has now been washed away, gone forever. She has become a caricature.

The other story albeit a little less dramatic, which captured my attention was the release of the Cullen Commission. 133 days of hearings, 199 witnesses, thousands of investigative hours, resulted in an 1800 page report. 600 pages more than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”. (I often wonder if Judges, like typists, get paid by the word.)

The conclusion of this massive multi-million dollar legal effort were the more than obvious conclusions that FINTRAC had failed and Civil forfeiture provisions need to change. That’s it. There was no evidence uncovered of parties having been “motivated by corruption”, but plenty of evidence of bureaucrats and all those involved in the industry doing nothing– despite knowing about and observing the clear violations.The farthest Judge Cullen would go out on the judicial limb was by saying “They should have to explain why they didn’t take the steps to combat money laundering”. In the end though nobody loses their job for not doing their job, and the clear moral of the story for bureaucrats if observing criminal behaviour– look the other way.

Mr. Cullen recommended that there be more “education” for lawyers, accountants, and mortgage brokers. This seems to be based on the somewhat naive thought that they were unaware of what was going on. Is it not more more likely that they were gaming the system, knowing full well that nobody was investigating them? He did say that a lot of the problems in what went on have been addressed and possibly rectified after the earlier Peter German report; which only makes me want to conclude that this Commission was a redundancy.

My travels went well despite my futile attempts to keep myself in some form of isolation from Canadian news. I firmly believe that everyone should leave this country and look back, it changes the perspective and alters your tools of measurement. There is no denying that this is a country of benefits and resources. At the same time, there is clearly a particular North American culture and society, subtly different, but indeed different from Europe. Different mores and aspirations. A culture where we seem keen to imitate the U.S. Their problems and their solutions are our problems and our solutions.

This led to some minute observations as I walked through the aging and historic cities. Cities which presumably are not immune to the same world problems we all share. There was a different atmosphere, difficult to identify, but it gradually became clearer. There was no blatant pan-handling, no mentally disturbed persons yelling and swearing at the heavens, the streets and public washrooms were cleaner and there were no multiple reports of people being randomly accosted on the streets. How was this possible? There were less sirens and air horns, no observable road rage, less eyes-down purposeful walking, a place where people seemed to work only to live. The police seemed more approachable, more one with the public, less robotic, less military. There seemed to be a greater element of trust of the people.

Has age and history simply made them more mature, more prone to pay attention to the history.

It is always good to get home and we do have a good country, but it is a young country. Maybe like teenagers we think we know everything and maybe know nothing. There was a lingering gnawing sense that maybe, just maybe, we have taken a wrong turn somewhere along our path.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by Nicholas Doumani – Some Rights Reserved

The Art of Looking the other Way

Posted on by Pete Cross

Fraud has many formulations and iterations; corruption, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, and outright theft. In this country it has become dispiritingly common place. The blatancy apparent in whichever direction we look. Is this dwindling of basic economic honesty beginning to fester, to grow, and create a doubt. Is there a sense that our democracy and our economy may be crumbling from the bottom up, slowly but methodically. Not by a directed sense of purpose, but rather by our obsessively looking the other way.

Outwardly, those in government corridors, put on a stern and concerned face when confronted with financial matters that go wrong. They give us solace and point to our economic stability, point to our formidable banking institutions, and of course our stable democratic government. But are we rotting through incompetence, disinterest and a lack of investigative desire? Are we being effected not suddenly by a heart attack of malfeasance, but instead a slow eating cancer of general ineptitude.

Fraud, even in its most basic clear cut form is continually around us. Just consider that in a recent survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers it was estimated that half of the companies in Canada report being victims of fraud. When the Covid “waves” hit, how do we ignore and countenance that during the much celebrated Liberal CERB benefit program over $500 million was paid out to persons who were multi-collecting; from CERB, the Canada Revenue Agency, or the Employment and Social Development Canada office.

In terms of just the CERB payments, a recent House Finance committee heard further discouraging testimony that the Auditor General can not even look into the fraudulent obtained payments– for another year– even though they have known about it since 2020. The CRA confirmed that they are not expecting to make a dent in the wrongful payments until 2023, probably about the same time that Federal government workers will actually have to go back to the office. Apparently, we are waiting on the Canada Revenue Agency to get their act together.

Is it a minor problem? You decide. CERB was budgeted to cost $24 billion –it came in at $81.6 billion. In July 2020 Employment and Social Development Canada knew already that $442 million was sent out to 221,320 people in the form of those double payments.

One must always “follow the money.” Where the money goes is where you will find people looking to take benefit from it and see it as an opportunity. The structure of these particular Covid programs created enticing pots of gold. Very little deception was needed.

Since Canada seems “reluctant” to undertake any kind of investigation or go after those that ripped the system, one wondered whether this was a North America wide malaise. Did this exceptional level of forgiveness for the under-handed equally permeate all of the liberal governmental establishments in the U.S. and Canada. As it turns out the American response to the potential for fraud that they too are now uncovering was in fact distinctly different.

In fact, the contrast in our two countries, even though they were running similarly intended programs is startling. If we reflect on the differences in approach and put Canada up to the mirror, our fermenting complacency boldly looks back at us.

Of course, the money amounts in the U.S. are staggering due to the size of their population versus Canada. The PPP as it was called in the U.S. was almost a carbon copy to that of CERB in Canada. (PPP was the Paycheck Protection Plan) The Canadians and the Americans also had more than one plan in effect. For instance, the U.S. also had the Covid disaster relief fund, and the unemployment relief fund.

Before one looks at the numbers, remember that the overall justification in Canada was at the onset of Covid, also echoed by the U.S. government. In Canada sacrificing “security for speed”, getting out the cheques to the populace was more important than the “security” of the system and the quick dispensation of the monies. The U.S. authorities also admit that most of the money was and is, “unrecoverable”.

Unlike Canadians, the Americans are a little more harsh in their language. They have no hesitancy in saying the program was: ” an invitation to fraudsters”, and the “largest fraud in U.S history”. That according to the official who was overseeing the payouts.

The Americans estimate that 10% of the monies paid out under their PPP was fraudulent. (We have seen estimates in this country under CERB of up to 30%). The Americans paid out $800 billion, therefore they estimate that $80 billion was paid out to fraudsters.

In addition, they estimate that $90 billion at a minimum and up to a maximum of $400 billion was taken from the secondary unemployment relief fund. Another $80 billion from a third program, the Covid disaster relief fund. Interestingly, they estimate that at least 1/2 of the stolen funds from the unemployment relief fund were stolen by “international fraudsters”.

Unlike Canadians, the Americans seem upset. They have set up the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee which is headed by General Mike Horowitz. This group has been given a mandate of 10 years to pursue the fraudsters.

Their results so far are in their words “minimal”, with only 178 people “convicted” so far. One wonders if in this country in the last thirty years if we have charged that many with significant fraud. What the investigators have uncovered is that the size and scope of the fraud may be overwhelming, continually expressing surprise on”how blatant it was”.

Using AI programming they are now scanning over 150 million records to identify patterns of fraud, such as the gas station in Houston whose phone number was used for over 150 applications for PPP. The perpetrators are appearing and being charged in increasing numbers; David Hines in Miami took them for $3.9 million; another person $7.2 million, some spending their financial gains on Lamborghini vehicles and mansions. A California couple stole $18 million and eventually pled guilty– the husband getting 17 years in prison, while his wife got 6 years. Yes, in the U.S. they also go to jail.

They have found that the service provider BlueVine, who was contracted to help the government dole out the funds and gave out $4.5 billion bragged about processing applications in less than 5 minutes. They estimate that a stolen identity or a fraudulent single identity could translate into a possible $30,000 in possible claims and benefits. The perpetrators would steal legitimate company names from the internet, inflate the number of employees or create the employees and then apply for the business loans.

One of the more blatant fraudsters was Danielle Miller out of Boston. Taking names from the state website and applying for Covid relief loans allowed her in 40 minutes make $100,000.

There is another myth that is also now also being dispelled. In speaking with experts in the fraud industry and in talking with private businesses they are quickly finding that “trade offs between speed and security” is simply not true. As one person pointed out, if this were true, why wouldn’t large private industries with a consumer facing business and who featured rapid response; why are they not going bankrupt? They describe it as categorically “false” narrative that speed necessitates neglect and oversight.

Of course, maybe none of this could happen in Canada, maybe we are much too honest here.

Auditor General Karen Hogan released a report which included the fact that the Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) “focused on delivering the benefit quickly…both organizations understood the rules…” and they “relied on applicants good faith”.

Let’s remember that the Canadian CERB program allowed anyone over the age of 15, who made a minimum of $5,000 in 2019, could apply for $2,000 for a period of 28 weeks; following an extension of the program in August 2020. If that was not enough, once the CERB ended for these folks, the government then directed them to a revamped Employment Insurance Program.

The Auditor General admitted that a “pre-payment screening structure could have been put in place” and that telling the government agencies to “ignore warnings or red flags” of fraud may not have been a good thing. The CRA did open a “snitch line”. The thinking must have been, if they couldn’t find the fraud, maybe the public could lead them to it.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre by the end of January 2021 had 8500 cases of CERB related identity theft.

In a 2020 FINTRAC Report made public in November 2021, that the CERB program was “knowingly and actively defrauded ” by scammers, organized crime, and that payments were made to people engaged in illegal or suspicious financial activity”.

Have we learned anything? In 1991 in Vancouver, Murray Pezim was investigated for fraud, the classic pump and dump strategy in mining stocks. In 2022 the U.S. Securities firm (not the Canadian authorities) charged David Siddoo for employing the same system. In 2021 the Cullen Commission exposed billions of dollars in money laundering. Really, nothing has changed.

In this country we are structurally not set up to look for fraud, or any variation of fraud. And if we aren’t looking we are sure to never find anything. The RCMP were recently investigating Trudeau and the Aga Khan who were allegedly influence peddling through elaborate vacations– and lo and behold they found that there are no rules that really apply.

The RCMP which should be the first stop in large scale fraud investigations in this country, as an organization has proven itself time and time again as incapable in the field of economic crime. Investigations in this country are talked about in years, not days, weeks or months. The solution is either that this type of crime is pulled from their organizational mandate, or they need to be dismantled and re-built and resourced to 2021 standards.

Maybe, the general public is willing to let their rage to continue to bubble away just below the surface. The Liberals and the NDP are counting on it. Is it that we are so complacent, so ensconced in our own sphere of security and relative prosperity that we just shrug it off, politically helpless, morally and ethically spent.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons by Ryan Steele – Some Rights Reserved

Conviction politics

Posted on by Pete Cross

This is a policing story, or more accurately a story about how the police should police. The resulting judicial action in this story should send a chill down the spine of all officers. It may even require you to re-assess your career choice.

This story originates in that bastion of polarized viewpoints and guileless political pandering that makes up those fifty states and one District to the south of us. The theory is that if you want to predict upcoming policing developments in Canada you usually don’t need to look much further than to our brother and sister officers in the U.S. of A.

At first blush it is easy to point out that the atmosphere in the United States and in Canada over the last couple of years would not be one that has conjured up positive attitudes to the police. With Trump gone (albeit astoundingly threatening to come back) Uncle Joe has now found his new left social conscious. We are watching as he and Justin, holding hands, run to the social democratic cliff like Thelma and Louise. Their audience and intended target for their attention and genuflection, and hopefully they assume their votes, is anyone who is in a minority– take your pick.

Racism in the United States is racism in Canada. Systemic racism in the U.S. crosses the border unencumbered to every level of government policy in Canada. The need for diversity in the U.S. is quickly mirrored with cries for diversity in Canada. Tearing down Confederate statues in the U.S. is met with the Indigenous and all those that consider themselves “woke” tearing down statues in Canada. We seem to copy the U.S. collective guilt with gleeful abandon.

We mimic their police in our garb and militarization, our stance indistinguishable from our Southern neighbours, so it is natural that we also suffer the consequences of policies designed to curtail the authoritative nature of policing or when things go wrong. We copy but then express surprise at the negative consequences.

The George Floyd incident in Minnesota left those already convinced of racism at every level spitting in rage and indignation. It sparked the de-funding police movement, and it sustained the belief that all police are systemically racist and ill-intentioned. The black community demanded justice at this the latest outrage, and rioting swept through the country. When the charges were laid against Derek Chauvin, there was a palatable fear of an acquittal by the government overseers of the police. The evidence as a result became secondary– a show trial was demanded, granted, and delivered.

Did George Floyd deserve to die? He did not. Was it intentional murder was then and remains the relevant question; the question that many are afraid to voice in this climate of angered throng justice.

Despite our differing histories, the after shocks in Minnesota and Portland Oregon were borne along by the allegedly shocked media, travelling unabated and unquestioned into this country.

Defunding the police, Black Lives Matter, “systemic” racism and uncontrolled cries of victimization, now resonant and rebound off the walls of government committee rooms on Municipal, Provincial and Federal levels. All allegations no matter how outlandish are now met by nodded knowing assurances from our politicians and their constant pledges of forthcoming change. Apologies have become an art form. To do otherwise, to even countenance the merits of an argument, is met by denunciation and ridicule.

So now the George Floyd case has produced another unjust and unreasonable outcome.

I am speaking of the conviction of the three officers who were also in attendance during the George Floyd arrest.

Two of the three officers were rookies, brand new to the topsy-turvy world of policing.

They were convicted of failing to intervene and prevent officer Chauvin, the senior officer at the scene, from kneeling on the neck of George Floyd on that dark day in May 2020. In essence they were convicted of failing to save the life of George Floyd. It was the proclaimed truth that Mr Floyd was in fact being “murdered” in front of them, and they did nothing to stop it.

Even the NY Times described it as an extraordinary “rare” example of the Justice Department prosecuting officers for their “inaction”. The Times also stated in typical rarefied righteous Liberal thinking, that this was a “signal” to the police– that “juries may become more willing to convict not just officers who kill people on the job, but also those that watch them do it”.

The officers, Tou Thao, age 36, J Alexander Keung, age 28, and Thomas Lane age 38 had apparently violated Mr Floyd’s constitutional rights by not providing “medical care” when he lost a pulse–two were guilty of not intervening to stop a fellow officer from planting a knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck. Even though there was evidence at the Chauvin trial that this was a police taught restraint technique.

Keung and Lane during the incident assisted in the arrest and had wrestled with the resisting Mr. Floyd on the ground when he was being handcuffed. If you watched the video and who hasn’t, Mr Thao was the one standing some distance away –trying to keep the crowd from interfering.

The officers could be sentenced to life in prison.

If that is not enough, they are also facing other charges of aiding and abetting a murder and have another trial scheduled for later this year. If you ever wanted to see a legal dog-piling of charges; this is it.

Of course, there is a huge problem with this verdict. It is illogical. It is naive and it defies common sense and observation. It comes from an ivory tower perspective and a viewpoint one where reality never dares to come into focus.

It is entirely hinged on the belief that the officers knew, or should have known that officer Chauvin was “murdering” George Floyd. Again, if one watched the video that was played across the nation every 15 minutes on the cable news networks, there was no evidence in the officers reactions that would support this theory.

One must also remember that an ambulance had already been called to attend to Mr Floyd. If you were witnessing, condoning, and sanctioning a “murder” would you be calling an ambulance? Would you intentionally kill someone In broad daylight with several onlookers– who were willing to film it and even though someone was getting “murdered” –did not think they should intervene?

It completely defies reason– except in a court system which in recent years in the United States has become distorted and warped by the winds of political expediency. Somewhere along the line the judiciary lost the ability for judicial reasoning.

Joe Biden has promised and is on the record as saying that he was going to be more aggressive in prosecuting civil rights violations. This Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Lyndon Johnson and was an act which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin”.

In this case, the jury had to be convinced that the officers actions or inactions was based on racism. It was because Mr. Floyd was black, not because they were responding to a complaint about Mr. Floyd. Yet, again, there is no evidence whatsoever that was introduced at the trial which gave rise to an allegation of racism. For the record, Mr. Keung is Chinese, Mr. Thao is Vietnamese.

But Biden and the Justice Department is playing to those that elected him as the Democrats struggle to keep the votes for the upcoming Senate and House Elections. If he was going to look forceful to the black vote to which the Democrats now desperately cling, George Floyd presented the first high profile case where he could flex his political muscles. It is this same desire which made him announce ahead of time that he was going to appoint a black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. No matter the rightful logic, announcing it ahead of time was pure politics, he couldn’t help himself.

This is not to argue that there are no circumstances where officers should not intervene. There clearly are times when officers are in the wrong.

In the Rodney King incident in Los Angelas, four officers stood by while officers beat Rodney King into submission. They were never charged although they clearly should have been. The recurring question is whether or not that incident is comparable to the George Floyd incident.

Upon hearing this latest verdict in the George Floyd matter, the press predictably turned the cameras to the more than willing Floyd family and in a clearly staged and rehearsed moment, George Floyd’s brother said that he “can finally breathe again”.

This was an unjust death, but it has now been layered over with an unjust verdict. The public believe that in this case two wrongs do make a right.

Could this happen in Canada? Of course, it could and likely will. Trudeau and the current administration see racism in every element of society and are thus determined to eradicate it. This is their truth as well. Commissioner Lucki has agreed, well at least after a gentle prodding.

In the United States Georgetown University has already enrolled 215 police departments on a course teaching how police officers should “intervene” if observing misbehaviour of other officers. It is also called “active bystander training”.

As a principle, this seems like a worthwhile course. As a practical exercise it is fraught with peril. By definition it runs head long into the paramilitary structure of policing. What no one seems to be currently considering is that this very same para-military structure is often paramount to street survival.

So on the one end of the pendulum, “snitching” on another officer is removed as an obstacle. At the other end of the action pendulum could be an officer failing to take control and command in a violent situation. The reality is that the instantaneous form of decision making which is prevalent in policing, is usually not conducive to open, long, or prolonged debate. That happens in those white towers.

When police officers get in trouble, it is normally because of an inability to control anger. The anger is often instantaneous and unpredictable. I am not so sure that this course will alter any outcomes despite the best intentions. Maybe time needs to be spent on an officers psychological make-up early in the recruitment process. Maybe trying to intervene with an angered officer, with the wrong disposition, maybe too little too late.

One can rest assured though, that if any police officer in Canada finds themselves in similar circumstances in this country, the politically enlightened will embrace the George Floyd verdicts regardless of borders or history. The staging and production of the George Floyd trial will become a touring company, soon to be coming to a theatre near you.

Photo courtesy of Renoir Geither via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved