Harper and his Omni-crime Bill

The Stephen Harper Conservatives are about to add to the cost of government.  Justice will soon cost us much more than it does now.  We all have heard about the cost to build new prisons and housing the new influx of prisoners due to minimum sentences contained in Bill C-10, the omni-crime bill.  Most the burden will be on the provincial side of spending.

The costs don't stop there.  We will need more courtrooms, more judges and staff, more legal aid and of course more prosecutors whom like everyone else in the legal system is overworked.  Again, most of these costs are borne by the provinces.

So while the Federal Conservative government delivers tough on crime laws for its base, they also plan to cut the cost of federal prosecutors by ten percent.

It’s rare for a judge to criticize the judicial system, but a clearly frustrated Justice Peter Tetley of the Ontario Court of Justice told a hearing in Newmarket in September that even without the extra load from new federal legislation, the situation is critical.
After being told by a Crown prosecutor that the first available date for a one and a half day trial was January 2013, Tetley accepted that the delay was unconstitutional and apologized to the defendant.
“If you don’t have enough people to try the cases and enough support staff to process them and you continue to hire police officers to arrest people, this is what happens,” he said. “So consequently, we’re in a predicament where we’re setting dates, that unless they can be brought forward, these charges are not going to be viable."

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Judicial+system+crisis+Crown+prosecutors+warn/5735714/story.html#ixzz1eJEby5be

Its all going to cost more, more people in jail, longer waits to go to trial and the likelihood we will see charges dismissed due to waits of two years or more.

Of course Harper is spreading the cost with little or no input from those he expects to pay.  So far Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia have made it clear they are not happy with this.  Lets see how the provinces deal with this while attempting to reign in their own budgets.

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi | UCDavis Bicycle Barricade

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi | UCDavis Bicycle Barricade

see also my post last night:

Police use pepper-spray against sitting Students

Police use pepper-spray against sitting Students

The rule of thumb in use-of-force: police are prohibited from applying more physical force than is necessary to accomplish a legitimate law enforcement task.

H/t to Joshua Holland

Watch the video below of university students.  The students are sitting.  The students are not threatening. They are sitting very peacefully.  Then a police office pulls out his pepper spray and walks down the line of sitting students and sprays everyone of them.

The students remain in place despite the spray.  The officer then goes back and sprays the students again. The police then randomly selecting students to be arrested.

Having arrested a few students, the police start backing out.  It is amazing to watch as the police back out.  They know they have used excessive force.  If you have a child or loved one in University, whether you agree with the occupy movement or not, do you feel that your child or loved one should be pepper sprayed because they were protesting in such a peaceful fashion?

Do you think the police could have used much less force?  Do you think the police even had to act here in the first place?

 What this video shows is the incredible lengths the police will go to end a peaceful protest. Its becoming far too common. Police seem to be ready to use extraordinary force to quell even the politest of protests.

'blind-sided by the force Occupiers have unleashed'

John Moore nails it in today's column in the National Post...

But the anger out there isn’t about knee-jerk anti-capitalism or grieving those who create genuine wealth. It’s about pushing back against those who got us into this mess by gaming the system. They were bought out with our money and had the gall to then insist they couldn’t possibly continue to do their jobs unless they collected Christmas bonuses that amount to three times the salary of a flight attendant.

As he points out in his column today, when families can no longer get by or plan to have a pension to retire, when education becomes too expensive, look out. We are in a period of severe instability. The economy is fragile and our government keeps telling us we will be okay, just need a few adjustments, some cut backs but all is good.

Kids play area at Occupy Toronto

We are being played by the very wealthy and their government.  The Harper Government served up a big threat to workers when they ordered postal workers back to work with less money than the company had last offered.  He was making it clear, when it comes to choosing winners, the government is on the side of the man. Workers will pay the price.

I live next to one of Canada's poorest neighbourhoods, St Jamestown in Toronto.  The people live in very tall rental buildings, housing two to three times the intended occupancy. Young families, people with disabilities, new Canadians, seniors.  Many working at minimum or near wages. The seniors have small pensions. They are struggling.  Each of the last few years has added to their burdens.

Many of the people here don't yet see a connection to the occupy groups or don't think it will change things. Yet under the surface lies a bomb about to go off.  Its smoldering now, you can smell the smoke...

John Moore: Elites likely to be blind-sided by the force Occupiers have unleashed

Harper Govt Spying on Canadians

The Stephen Harper government is spending a ton of money spying on Canadians.  Even after they were told not to spy on the medical records of VETS they have continued the practice.  And now we hear they are sying on First Nations advocates.

Cindy Blackstock

Cindy Blackstock is a hard working advocate that has become a thorn under the rear end of the Conservative government.  The government has looked at her Indian Status file at least twice and included information from it in briefings, have stalked her facebook page after hours from a home computer to add further information to their files on her and have barred her from attending meetings with Aboriginal Affairs

It seems the Conservatives don't need CSIS (as far as we know they are not using CSIS) to do their spying, they are using management staff in the government.  This is appalling.  I expect that anyone with a history of advocacy, and meeting with this government may face this kind of intrusion into their privacy.

As Jack Layton stated during the english language debate in the 2011 election, "You're not the same Stephen Harper."  That Stephen Harper was about open, honest and accountable government.      

See Toronto Star article here: Tim Harper: Government spies on advocate for native children
See APTN News here: Federal Aboriginal Affairs department spying on advocate for First Nations children

H/t to GritChik

Pepper sprayed 84 year old woman and homophobia at Occupy

It looks like the Occupy folks have really pissed off the management.  In Seattle the police pepper sprayed woman, Dorli Rainey, 84 who was part of the occupy protest.

Dorli Rainey, 84

I imagine she must have been a real threat to police.

More at the Toronto Star here










And in New York videographer Joey Boots was the subject of a homophobic slur by a security guard. “Your fly’s open, faggot,” the unnamed security guard said in response to Boots, who was asking several workers on-camera whether they are employed by Brookfield Properties, the owner of Zuccotti Park. “That’s nice man, really nice. Really professional,” Boots replied (video below; exchange takes place at 1:48).


That's just two examples of what is going on.  There are many more examples of police brutality and violence at the many Occupy sites across the United States.

EnCana Polluting American Water?

Opps!  Ethical oil, Canada's new brand got a black eye in Wyoming.  The EPA has been testing water to confirm its contaminated due to Fracturing.  Seems EnCana a well known Canadian company has been doing this, albeit legally, may well be responsible for contaminating ground water in the State of Wyoming. 

Read more about the EPA results here:

EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer

Conflict Oil or Ethical Oil

Conflict Oil or Ethical Oil.  Its amazing to see this campaign roll out.  The people that previously had somewhat successfully changed Tar sands to Oil sands are now suggesting oil from Alberta is an ethical choice over oil from Saudi Arabia or Iran.

On the face of it they do have a point.  They point to the treatment of women in these dark skinned countries and they also point to the what could happen to queers.  It's a pretty good new paint job.

What is amazing is that this is happening in Alberta.  You know, the province that was the last to end legal discriminating of gay people.  The province that still has the strongest views against gays.  The province where all but one MP would vote for Capital Punishment, vote to ban abortion and rescind gay rights, given half a chance. And our federal government has made a huge shift as well.  Its not Alberta's oil anymore, its Canada's Oil.

The last Prime Minister to refer to Alberta's oil as Canada's oil was Pierre Trudeau.  Since then federal ministers or prime ministers have been careful to dodge that hot pot. Its not really Canada's oil as you you know, resources are provincial jurisdiction, it is however useful to push the progressive Canada stuff in the media, given the opposition to the Tar sands oil.

So Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the guy who once proclaimed the need for a fire wall around Alberta to protect it from eastern Canada, is now claiming the oil as Canada's oil. The Canada Brand around the world use to mean clean and caring.  Its taken a few hits since Harper came to power. We get awards for being the bad guys in the worlds efforts for a cleaner environment when we use to be seen as leaders.

The Canada brand is still strong in the USA. Its not the enviros the Government has to convince to buy 'ethical oil', its middle America.  Americans are somewhat insecure these days. They want American made oil and if they can't drill in parks in the Alaska well then oil from Canada is the next best thing. Yet Americans have been inundated with messaging that the oil from the Tar sands is bad for the environment in a big way.  Canada and Alberta Governments had to find a way to sell it.  Its now ethical oil. Available only from Canada.

Now we need to ship that ethical oil to Huston Texas to be refined.  That requires a new pipeline.  The new pipeline was called Keystone for some reason.  Perhaps they should have called it the Freedom pipe. Then the folks that were proposing this pipeline decided to hire a former American ambassador who is a Republican to lobby the Democratic White House.

The decisions so far weren't killers to the movement of ethical oil from Canada to the USA. They got great press coverage on lots of TV networks. Stephen Colbert played a clip in which the numbers of jobs grew depending on which Fox channel news you tuned in. It started as 20,000 jobs, then 25,000 then 115,000 indirect jobs finally to over a million jobs for Americans.  The pipeline would be great for America.

No it fell down because the planners of the pipeline forgot about the calendar and they couldn't have picked a worse route making it even easier for the  Obama Whitehouse to delay the decision until after the next election. Greeny folks made sure Obama knew that they knew an election was just around the corner.

The  pipeline folks really blew the route.  After the BP failure to cap a well and the Enbridge pipeline spill in the Chicago area last year, running a bigger pipeline through precious water reserves in Nebraska was just plain stupid.  That gave the enviros a local issue with which to hit the project on the head.  Remember, the enviros were opposed to the Tar Sands.  Delaying the pipeline is a fundamental key to that goal.

So the guys that managed to get the media to call the tar sand the oil sands, that have convinced a fair number of people that there is such a thing as Ethical Oil, got a little silly in the end.

Now as the issue goes to bed till after the US elections in November 2012, the Prime Minister has hired the dude that was behind the Ethical Oil campaign.  Watch out for the new Compassionate Conservative campaign to start soon.