Jailed For Doing Their Jobs

It is an action worthy of a third-world nation. You know, the kind run by an authoritarian who takes it as a personal affront whenever someone demonstrates against or writes about human rights abuses, lashing out with incarceration or worse for the offending parties.

Only this time it is happening in Canada.

Two journalists reporting from the Wet’suwet’en territory were among 15 people arrested and detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia Friday night. Both remain in custody.

Since last year, media has covered RCMP raids in the territory, Indigenous rights and police removal of defenders of the land who are blocking the logging of old-growth forests in the area.

Photographer Amber Bracken was on assignment for The Narwhal when she was arrested. Filmmaker and photographer Michael Toledano, a freelance reporter who has been living in Wet’suwet’en territory in order to create a documentary about what Indigenous people face in the region, was also arrested.

Despite having all the right credentials attesting to their journalistic enterprises, both are still in jail and slated to be transported to Prince George tomorrow for a bail hearing.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly may know that I have a deep respect for the work journalists do. Despite the odd number being mere mouthpieces for propaganda, most are hard at work in an often thankless job, disseminating the kind of information crucial to an informed democracy.

None of  this, it would seem, matters a whit to the RCMP, despite the fact that they are now engaging in clearly illegal action.

The Narwhal said in statements posted to Twitter that they are “extremely disturbed” to learn that Bracken was arrested and that the RCMP is refusing to release her in violation of her charter rights.

Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), says that the two arrests are unjustified.

“It’s completely and utterly shocking the extent to which the RCMP are going to prevent journalists from covering events that are happening in the public interest,” he said. 

The action is especially shocking in light of a court ruling last summer.

In July, the Canadian Association of Journalists, a non-profit that works to defend press freedom and connect reporters across the country, along with multiple other journalism organizations won a court challenge at the Supreme Court in B.C. on press freedom in the Fairy Creek area.

 They urged the court to modify an injunction that would tell the RCMP to stop restricting media from the area without an operational reason to do so. The final decision from the judge agreed with the media groups, explaining that the RCMP had failed to prove why they needed to exclude media from covering the region.

Media have argued they need to be present to document police actions on the territory, where the Wet’suwet’en people say they have never ceded or given up their land.

Jolly says the recent arrests demonstrate that the ruling has fallen on deaf ears.

Our country has many things to be proud of. Suppressing freedom of the press clearly is not one of them.

 

 

 

Wash And Dry?

As I have written in the past on this blog, I have long suspected that Canada is soft on white-collar crime, including money laundering. The fact that the Panama Papers has yielded almost no recovery by the CRA of hidden tax money speaks volumes.

It would appear that laissez-faire attitude is now working its way through other federal bodies. Marco Chown Oved writes:

Despite multiple recent reports that identified Toronto’s vulnerability to money laundering, the RCMP has decided to disband its Ontario financial crimes unit, the Star has learned.

Announced internally on December 10 in a series of meetings held in detachments across the province, the decision will see 129 officers and eight civilian staff re-assigned to other units, including organized crime, anti-terrorism and drugs, according to an internal email obtained by the Star.

Breaking up a stand-alone unit devoted to investigating complex and difficult cases has financial crime experts worrying that fraud and money laundering activity will increase.

The many people currently working in the division will be redeployed to others dealing with terrorism, drugs and organized crime - a very bad idea:

“It just won’t work,” said Garry Clement, former director of the RCMP proceeds of crime unit. “The RCMP, in my view, has sort of lost sight of the fact that taking on financial crime requires a very high degree of expertise.”

A similar reorganization happened in B.C. several years ago, said Clement, where there has since been an explosion of money laundering in casinos, real estate and luxury cars.

“It amazes me that they tried this approach of dissolving the (financial crime) units and putting them together with other units and we know the results,” he said.

Says former deputy commissioner of the RCMP, Peter German,

“Eliminating economic crime as a national priority for the RCMP is a mistake. It was recognized years ago that protection of our economy is a critical issue for the national police. Furthermore, following the money trail is accepted around the world as likely the most effective way to attack organized crime where it hurts most,” German said.

It is difficult to draw any positive inferences from this egregiously bone-headed move, a reminder once more that when one scratches beneath the surface, all sorts of unpleasant implications are exposed.

A Sordid Tale

I want to tell you a story. It is a story I wish I didn't have to tell, given its sordid nature, and it is one that reflects badly on my own judgment.

Sometimes the world really is too much with us. As some will know, we just returned from a week in Cuba where we stayed at a 3-star resort half-way between Varadero and Havana that we visited once before, in 2010. During the second part of the trip I fell ill with a bug, likely from something I ate. My activities were therefore somewhat limited after that, a detail that seems relevant to the story.

A couple of days into our holiday, my sister-in-law, who accompanied us, told me that she had seen a man, likely in his fifties, with a young Cuban girl who appeared to be about 12 years old. They were sharing a bungalow. I did not actually see them until the day before our departure for home, when I ventured out to a barbecue being held nearby. The girl indeed looked to be about 12, but she could have been, I suppose, as old as 13 or 14. The age of consent in Cuba is 16.

While prostitution is fairly common in Cuba, the girls I have seen in resorts accompanying Canadian and European men have always been at least 18 or older. This is a terrible example of what appears to be child sexual exploitation, something I have never before actually witnessed. I do not blame the Cubans, a resourceful people, some of whom will do almost anything to survive economically. I do, however, blame people like the adult I saw who, I fear, may very-well be Canadian, and someone, likely the management at the resort, who is clearly complicit in this alleged crime, given that the girl was wearing a resort wristband.

And here is where my bad judgment comes into play. Should I have complained to the management? In retrospect, I sincerely wish that I had. My thought at the time was that such a complaint would have yielded nothing, for the above-stated reason. As well, about two years ago we met a Canadian couple at a resort in Holguin we have visited several times, and they told me a story that was quite instructive. The resort's previous manager had come upon a guest and his 'companion' who was clearly underage. She phoned both the girl's parents and the Cuban police. When the parents arrived, they were outraged by the manager's actions, as they had sanctioned their daughter's involvement with the man. The manager was later rebuked by her superiors and told to never do something like that again. As I stated, she is no longer the manager there.

These things, along with what we were told a few years ago by two Holguin friends who we got to know fairly well, convinced me that reporting would have been futile. I realize now that I should have nonetheless gone ahead and done so. To have drawn the conclusion I did was a failure of critical thinking and a failure of my moral duty.

So what did I do instead? Well, I took photos of the 'couple' at the barbecue; my thought was to post them, with the girl's face blurred out, on social media in the hope that someone wold recognize him. I had also intended to post them here for the same purpose, but I have come to realize that the Internet as such is not the answer, and could have set in motion an unfortunate chain of events. I do not want to compound my irresponsibility.

However, I did post a very truncated version of this story both on Tripadvisor and the closed Facebook group devoted to Cameleon Villas Jibacoa. Given the fury that I provoked on the latter, I now wonder exactly what it was I hoped to achieve in that venue. However, one person on that forum chose to offer not his abuse but his help in trying to identify the offender, as he has some contacts among the staff. He was a rare bright light in the midst of some very dark suggestions from others about my character and motives.

On Monday I contacted the RCMP, but got a disappointing response. The local detachment officer told me that the federal force's main mandates right now involve domestic security and organized crime. He suggested I contact our local police force, which, of course, lacks both the authority and the resources to pursue such matters. This morning I was able to reach the appropriate detective on my local police force, and he expressed shock that the RCMP was not interested, as it is their jurisdiction, and they have facial recognition software that might be able to identify the man I took pictures of. Nonetheless, he was quite helpful and is passing on my information to the local human trafficking division, and I am awaiting a call from them.

You might also wonder what the purpose of this post is, other than to serve a somewhat cathartic function for my own failure in this matter. The trajectory of this Cuban child's life is probably set, and nothing will likely change it. However, if this story has any value, it may serve simply as a reminder that we all have responsibilities whether we are at home or travelling outside the country. Since my return, I have tried to educate myself about the problem of child sex tourism, and I recommend the following two links to get you started, should you be interested:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/16/canadians_are_major_customers_in_cubas_child_sex_market.html

http://www.ibcr.org/images/contenu/publications/Tourisme-sexuel-int-lowres-en.pdf

Thanks for reading this story, and I would appreciate it if you not write any comments that suggest I did my best. I know I did not, and ultimately this story is about a much bigger problem than how I might feel about my own bad judgment.

Harperian Hypocrisy: The Family Values Regime Disappoints Yet Again

While the Harper regime always touts itself as a government that stands up for family vlaues, evidence once more indicates this is little more than rhetoric and rank hypocrisy, aided and abetted by an almost completely politicized RCMP.

The CBC reports

RCMP have been holding back millions of dollars from the force's vaunted program to fight online child pornography, partly to help the Harper government pay down the federal deficit.

CBC News has learned that over a five-year period, Canada's national police force Mounties withheld some $10 million in funds earmarked for its National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre and related projects, linchpins of the government's anti-child-pornography agenda.

The cuts, made partly as an RCMP contribution to the government's so-called deficit reduction action plan, have occurred even as the number of child-exploitation tips from the public increase exponentially.

The systematic underfunding is highlighted in a draft report prepared for Public Safety Canada, and obtained through the Access to Information Act.

For its part, the Harper regime denies that the underexpenditures have anything to do with fiscal matters; it's just that the force can't find good people to do the job.

Really? And this problem goes back to 2008? Past evidence suggests that explanation simply won't fly.

And For Those Who Think Bill C-51 Is A Good Thing

Think again.

The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

The report, dated January 24, 2014, was obtained by Greenpeace and uses the kind of language one would expect from a police force that has become deeply politicized.

[M]ilitants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels, and violent environmental extremists are but two of the phrases that should give all of us pause.

The RCMP issued their usual disclaimers, averring that they do not surveil peaceful groups. Said RCMP spokesman Sergeant Greg Cox:

“There is no focus on environmental groups, but rather on the broader criminal threats to Canada’s critical infrastructure. The RCMP does not monitor any environmental protest group. Its mandate is to investigate individuals involved in criminality.”

Yet, perhaps tellingly,

... Sgt. Cox would not comment on the tone of the January, 2014, assessment that suggests opposition to resource development runs counter to Canada’s national interest and links groups such as Greenpeace, Tides Canada and the Sierra Club to growing militancy in the “anti-petroleum movement.”

For a force whose mandate is public safety, the report veers into areas that can only be described as economic and political:

The report extolls the value of the oil and gas sector to the Canadian economy, and adds that many environmentalists “claim” that climate change is the most serious global environmental threat, and “claim” it is a direct consequence of human activity and is “reportedly” linked to the use of fossil fuels. It echoes concerns first raised by Finance Minister Joe Oliver that environmental groups are foreign-funded and are working against the interests of Canada by opposing development.

Just coincidence that the language echos that of Joe Oliver?

“This document identifies anyone who is concerned about climate change as a potential, if not actual – the lines are very blurry – ‘anti-petroleum extremist’ looking to advance their ‘anti-petroleum ideology,’” said Keith Stewart, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace.

Greenpeace, and the rest of us, should be very, very concerned.


Are these the faces of the new terrorists?

Yet Another Desperate and Despicable Ploy: More Harper Narrowcasting

The politics have a look of desperation about them. As they see their electoral chances diminishing among the wider Canadian public with each new sordid revelation, it looks like the Harper crowd is doubling down with its base, a strategy that I questioned in my earlier post today.

Steven Blaney, who could only be considered a Public Safety Minister in a Canada that has grown decidedly Orwellian, has announced a plan that will erode public safety but perhaps fire up the base. CBC News reports the regime minion has announced the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act which would make life easier for many Canadian gun owners.

Currently, gun owners in Ontario, Quebec and P.E.I. have to apply to each province's chief firearms officer when they want to transport a restricted or prohibited weapon. Under the new rules, gun owners in all provinces would get permission to transport weapons as a condition of their licence.

But wait! There's more!

The government also plans to allow a grace period for gun owners with expired permits.

And even more ominously, this cryptic observation:

The new rules would also give the federal government more say in decisions previously made by each province's chief firearms officer.

Finally, you may recall this dandy little weapon that the RCMP banned earlier this year:

The national police force changed the Swiss Arm rifle from restricted to prohibited, the main reason being that the guns could be easily converted to be fully automatic. Automatic weapons, which shoot a spray of bullets with one trigger pull, are illegal in Canada.

In March, the government said it was troubled by the decision, and gave gun owners permission to keep the weapons, via a two-year amnesty.

Under the new plan, gun owners would also be allowed to use the weapons, in essence restoring them to their previous status.

Indeed, there is much to chew upon here for a segment of the Canadian population.

A Conspiracy Of One

It’s not uncommon for an RCMP Commissioner to jump through hoops at Stephen Harper’s bequest.

We saw that when Zaccardelli gave Harper a leg up to victory by conjuring up an empty scandal about Ralph Goodale in mid-election campaign. Ominously for a country based on the rule of law, Zac refused to explain his actions afterwards, defying the demands of Parliament for answers.

Now we have Commish Paulson who seized the Duffy-Wright-Harper scandal at the outset with an iron fist. Paulson’s leaked e-mail in which he absolutely forbade his senior officers from having contact with opposition parliamentarians without his express prior consent pretty much established that the investigation and any eventual prosecutions were going to be decided from the top, no questions asked.

Then the circus began. First, RCMP investigators opined that the $90,000 ‘gifted’ by Nigel Wright to Mike Duffy was a bribe. Then they announced that Nigel Wright, who put up the money for the bribe, would not be charged. Then, after a suitable interval and in the middle of the summer recess (Stephen Harper’s preferred time for doing these things), it was announced that, while Wright was still off the hook, Mike Duffy would be charged with accepting a bribe.

Paulson hasn’t explained how he jumped through that hoop. It’s been left to others to speculate that investigators could not conclude that Wright had given Duffy the money with a “corrupt intent” but were satisfied that Duffy accepted the gift with a “corrupt intent.”

Wait a minute. On what possible basis did the Royal Conservative Mounted Police absolve Nigel Wright of any corrupt intent? They had to have done it by isolating all the surrounding circumstances. They excluded the other elements of the “deal” from the cash payment. We know what that deal was because Duffy was foolish enough to put it all in an e-mail to his confidantes. It was that e-mail, leaked to a reporter, that triggered the scandal. We know what that deal was because the elements of the deal Duffy described all came to pass.

Wright didn’t just hand Duffy $90,000. The money came with strings attached, bundled into a deal. Duffy was ordered to keep his mouth shut and to refuse to cooperate with the auditors appointed by the Senate to report on expense irregularities. There’s the corruption the RCMP doesn’t want to acknowledge. But wait, there’s more. Duffy wasn’t just getting cash. The guys who conjured up what the cops say, in respect of Duffy was a bribe, also promised to see to it that the Senate audit report on Duffy would be laundered. They did and it was. There’s the corruption that the RCMP has to do backflips to ignore. The bribe was the whole deal.

That Nigel Wright wrote a cheque on his personal account is irrelevant. The PMO gang tried to get the money elsewhere – from the Conservative Party’s cache - and they almost succeeded. Only when that fell through did Wright step in with his own cheque after clearing the deal with Stephen Harper. Would it have been a bribe if the cash came from CPC funds but not when Wright had to step in with his own money?

By looking at Wright’s cheque in isolation, the Royal Conservative Mounted Police are blatantly whitewashing the involvement and culpability of everyone except Stephen Harper’s target, Mike Duffy. No wonder Paulson put his senior officers under a gag order.

This deal oozes corruption throughout the PMO to the prime minister to the Tory Senate leadership to the Senate audit committee to the Conservative Party. The measure of the integrity of the RCMP lies in its ability to sweep all of that under the carpet even after the facts are out in the public.

We know better. We know this prosecution has been tailored to take Nigel Wright, Benjamin Perrin, Stephen Harper, Senators Gerstein, LeBreton, Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen, and Arthur Hamilton off the hook. This is the doing of the prime minister’s partisan state police apparatus and it harkens back to another time on another continent.

If it was valid to jettison the Canadian Airborne Regiment after the Somalia scandal (and, for the record, I’m not convinced it was), then this sorry affair surely warrants dismantling the RCMP. There’s no place in a democracy for a partisan political state police agency. From the barn burnings in Quebec in the 60s to this I’ve certainly had my fill of these rogue operators.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib

Hope He Has A Restful Summer

Wondering if the rotund Senator from somewhere has made his annual pilgramage to P.E.I. yet. In any event, the Cavendish Cottager (as The Disaffected Lib refers to him) should not travel too far afield, as the RCMP may have some questions for him soon. As reported in The Ottawa Citizen, the federal force

...appears to have broadened its investigation into Senator Mike Duffy’s expense claims by obtaining campaign records from 11 Conservative candidates from the last election.

The exhibit report filed in court lists campaign returns and “expense claims and payment documents related to Mike Duffy from the following candidates.” It lists current Conservative MPs Gerald Keddy, Greg Kerr, John Carmichael, and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. The list appears to be comprised of candidates who Duffy promoted during the 2011 election campaign, when he visited ridings across the country on behalf of Tory candidates.

One does not want to jump to the conclusion that The Puffster was double-dipping, claiming both per diems from the Senate and expenses from the canadidates; no, one definitely doesn't want to impute fraud on a man who apparently exists in a such a state of confusion that where he lives is one of life's more profound mysteries.

That would be cruel indeed.

Coming To An Institution Near You

I have long held a very critical view of institutions. Whether they be political, educational, religious, charitable or protective, I believe the effectiveness and integrity of any organization declines with age as self-interest, self-promotion, and lust for power and control supplant the original purposes of serving the common good.

Two recent reminders of the inevitability of institutional senescence are found in today's Toronto Star. The first details how an RCMP officer, Const. Susan Gastaldo, is facing dismissal after she was coerced into a sexual relationship with her superior officer, Staff-Sgt. Travis Pearson, while Pearson himself only faces the possibility of a demotion:

Lawyer Walter Kosteckyj, who represents Gastaldo in a separate civil case against the RCMP, says his client’s situation shows that those who bring forward complaints about the RCMP are more severely punished than those found guilty.

“Susan Gastaldo refused to bow down to pressure and, as a consequence, she could lose her job. The RCMP board decided she was more guilty than Pearson was even though he was a senior officer and maintained his denial up to the last day,” said Kosteckyj, a former RCMP officer.

He went on to say, “Time and time again, we have seen the RCMP is not interested in dealing with harassment and is more interested in protecting their present culture.”

As a retired teacher, I know only too well the measures that administrators will take to silence those it feels compromise the status quo or their own upward career trajectory, so the RCMP's reaction is hardly surprising to me.

The next instance involves a little girl being harassed, threatened, and both verbally and physically abused by a religious institution. No, I am not talking here about the Taliban, but rather another group of religious fanatics, some ultra-orthodox Jews in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh who think they are doing God's will by expressing hatred and intolerance for those who don't share their views, which include the desire for sidewalk segregation of the sexes, and the use of “modesty patrols” which they have dispatched to enforce a chaste female appearance and [hurl] stones at offenders and outsiders. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly in closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts.

The little girl who has been an especially vulnerable target to this hate-group is 8-year-old student Naama Margolese. These religious fanatics have spat on her and called her a whore for dressing “immodestly.”

Nama attends a religious school and dresses with long sleeves and a skirt. Extremists, however, consider even that outfit, standard in mainstream Jewish religious schools, to be immodest.

Unfortunately, this kind of criminal behaviour has apparently been countenanced by the authorities because the Ultra-Orthodox hold a fair bit of political power.

I rest my case.

Police Brutality at the National Level

This morning, the Globe and Mail website has posted video evidence of brutality by the R.C.M.P. in Kelowna, B.C. The footage, shot by a newsman, shows the authorities pulling over Buddy Tavares, wanted in connection with careless use of a firearm. As he complies with the orders to get out of his vehicle and lie down on the pavement, one of the officers kicks him in the head, for no apparent reason. As one of Tavares' friends says in the video, he is recovering from brain surgery, and the kick could have either killed him or put him into a coma.

The sickening episode can be viewed here.