BC fiscal cupboard is bare

The B.C. government said in its Throne Speech that it will review its health authorities, boards of education and Crown corporations in an effort to find cost savings.

"Shrinking revenues will by necessity curtail our discretionary spending," the government said. "The fiscal cupboard is bare and currently hangs on a wall of deficit spending."

Shrinking revenues: Only three weeks ago the government reduced its revenues by giving royalty breaks to the oil and gas industry, of all businesses.

Is the government of Gordon Campbell merely incompetent or is it determined at any cost to give money to very profitable industries?

Stephen Harper's Senate appointments

Integrity or expedience?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will name eight new Senators. These appointments will give the Conservatives 46 of the 105 seats in the Senate. The Liberals have 53 and the rest are independent.

Stephen Harper, January 15, 2004:

"... the Upper House remains a dumping ground for the favoured cronies of the Prime Minister."


Conservative Party website during 2006 election:

"A conservative government will not appoint to the senate anyone who does not have a mandate from the people."


Yet, the government has "now made 27 Senate appointments of his Conservative cronies in less then a year."

And what a lucrative "job" it is! It pays $ 132,000.- for working, on average, 70 days a year sitting in the Senate. However, this didn't stop some of the new appointees wanting to keep their current jobs as well.

It's not about Khadr. It's about us.

CTV News reported:

Omar Khadr's lawyer says his client is being unfairly punished by the Conservative government, which has steadfastly refused to request his repatriation from Guantanamo Bay despite court rulings ordering it to do so.

Earlier this month, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling in Khadr's favour and ruled the government must move to bring Khadr home.

On Tuesday, Ottawa confirmed it will fight the decision and take the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Khadr's Canadian lawyer Denis Edney said he is mystified by the government's continued refusal to bring Khadr home.

"Every Western country that has had a detainee in Guantanamo Bay has simply requested that their detainees come home, and that has happened," Edney told CTV News Channel [emphasis is mine].

Khadr is accused of lobbing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15. In seven years in Guantanamo Bay, he has not gone through a trial.

Edney said his client should be treated as a child soldier, noting that Canada donates millions to help rehabilitate child soldiers from countries like Sierra Leone, because it considers them to be victims.

"And yet Omar Khadr is not afforded any protection from Canada. It boggles my mind, I just see it as a mean-spirited government that selects what type of Canadian it wishes to assist," he said.
The Government of Canada is saying justice should take its course.

Justice Conservative style.

"Even some Conservatives privately admit they have been taken aback by Harper’s utter indifference to pleas about Khadr’s plight."

Besides it's a move which is likely to waste a lot of taxpayers' money. I'd be willing to give odds that the Supreme Court of Canada will uphold the judgments of the lower courts.

Most importantly, it's not primarily about Khadr.

Above all it's about us and the kind of country and society we wish to live in.

Canadian Pork

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced that the federal government's is offering $75 million to struggling pork producers as well as $17 million for marketing pork to consumers. "We need to reduce our current over-supply," he said. Ottawa's combination of loans, buyouts and marketing cash isn't enough for the industry. They had asked for $800 million.

This is another example of latter-day-capitalism: Profits are privatized, losses socialized.

Taser Lawsuit against Braidwood Inquiry

Taser International is filing a lawsuit against the Braidwood Inquiry, which ruled Tasers can be fatal and should be severely restricted.

"The Arizona-based company says the inquiry into the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport, led by Justice Thomas Braidwood, was biased and neglected to enter evidence brought forward by Taser.

Taser claims "the commission breached basic principles of fairness and fundamental justice... both in its procedure and in the manner in which the report and its conclusions were reached ...

Taser International also alleges that the inquiry's findings were unsupported by medical science ...

Taser will be asking the court to quash large portions of the 19 recommendations made by the commission. It will also be asking for an injunction that would bar Braidwood from using the findings in any future rulings."

Others say the company is using the lawsuit to intimidate its critics and protect its profits.

The use of Tasers has been restricted by police forces across Canada in response to the inquiry.

BC Minimum Wage

"It’s expensive to live in BC—we have some of the highest prices anywhere for housing, food, transportation and tuition fees. In fact, when you take living costs into account, we actually have the lowest minimum wage level in the country." Some facts about low income earners in BC.

B.C.’s minimum wage is $8 per hour unless you are a worker without much experience when it is only $6 per hour. Moreover, the minimum wage has been frozen since 2001.

Since September 2008 BC has been tied with New Brunswick and PEI for the lowest minimum wage in Canada while having one of the highest cost of living in the country. "In Vancouver a minimum wage earner working full time would have about $240 left in their pocket after paying the rent."

We also have one of the highest transit fares in the country. For example, somebody living in Surrey and working in Vancouver would have $ 166.75 left after paying for the monthly bus pass ($73.25). Even a single person couldn't possibly live on $ 42.- per week.

If that person is a single parent it would literally be a losing proposition to go to work because of the cost of daycare.

RCMP watchdog: The force shouldn't investigate itself

"RCMP officers should not be allowed to investigate their fellow Mounties for serious offenses, because such a system fails to inspire confidence in the investigative process and raises conflict of interest questions, concludes a new report from the RCMP watchdog.

The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP [CPC] has concluded that the Mounties' current strategy of having police investigate police for cases involving sexual assault, serious injury, or death, is "flawed and inconsistent" and needs to be updated and improved. ...

In its investigation, the CPC reviewed 28 sample RCMP cases that took place over a five-year period between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2007. Six of the cases involved deaths.

And while the CPC found "no instances of actual bias by actual members" and that the Mounties acted professionally in all the sample cases, there were some noteworthy problems."

"No instances of actual bias by actual members": Isn't that amazing! Colleagues investigating colleagues without any bias.

Who can believe that? Especially considering that:

"Twenty-five per cent of the primary investigators in the sample cases personally knew the officers they were investigating.
A lone investigator was assigned in 60 per cent of the sample cases.
In nearly one-third of the sample cases, the investigating officer was at the same rank or lower rank as the officer he was investigating, leaving open the possibility of intimidation.
There was a "significant disparity" in the level of qualifications of the investigating officers."
More

It would appear obvious to any intelligent 14 year old that this is a flawed system. The only question remaining in my mind is why did it take so long for the CPC to come to that conclusion given the history of RCMP wrongdoing. (Some links at that page do not work anymore but you can always check the accuracy of my contentions by using Google).

The RCMP has rejected a watchdog report that argues that Mounties have to stop investigating their own colleagues in every serious incident involving a killing.

Commissioner William Elliott said there can be further changes to the RCMP's internal investigations policy, but he insisted the situation is “not as bleak” as was laid out by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP.

Also, consider, for example, the case of Ian Bush, who was shot in the back of his head on October 29th, 2005 by RCMP officer Koester while in custody. Twenty minutes later he was dead. Assistant RCMP Commissioner Al Macintyre said the use of lethal force was necessary to ensure the officer's safety.

Officer Koester claimed that he was being choked from behind [!] to unconsciousness and acted in self defence. He was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Even if that is true, how does one shoot somebody in the back of the head when that person is behind you?

Many shootings by RCMP officers violated RCMP policy and did not meet force's own standards for the use of deadly force, according to an internal RCMP report obtained by The Vancouver Sun. (July 28, 2008)

"According to the report, of the 30 RCMP shootings nationwide in 2006 (the most recent year for which data was available), only 10 met the RCMP's test for using lethal force -- namely, to protect someone from death or "grievous bodily harm." Another two were outside the officer's control, such as a gun going off in a struggle with a suspect.

Nine violated RCMP policy -- such as an officer firing at a car to try to stop it -- and another nine were accidental, resulting from a member handling a firearm in an unsafe manner.

The internal RCMP report, completed in early 2008 and obtained by The Vancouver Sun through the Access to Information Act, says the number of shootings that violate RCMP policy is troubling.

"If the number of [non-compliant] incidents does not significantly decrease in future years, this would be cause for concern and clearly point to the need for additional initiatives to ensure that members are complying with the law and with policy when they resort to lethal force," the report states.

According to the report, both accidental discharges and non-compliant shootings had tripled over the past two years -- there were just three of each in 2004 -- though it notes this may be a result of RCMP divisions doing a better job of reporting mistakes. The internal report also highlights some stark regional differences in how often officers use their guns. ... In B.C., the number of police shootings has dropped dramatically in recent years, from 27 in 2002 to just nine in 2006. In contrast to B.C., the report notes the number of shootings in Alberta has skyrocketed from just one in 2002 to eight in 2006 (peaking at 12 in 2005). ...Alberta now
[i.e. 2006] accounts for nearly one-third of all RCMP shootings, despite the fact fewer than 15 per cent of its members are stationed there. [That province] is still reporting almost twice as many incidents as would be projected based on member population. ...

B.C.'s relatively low rate of police shootings is in stark contrast to the province's record on in-custody deaths. A separate RCMP report made public earlier this year found that 56 per cent of RCMP in-custody deaths over the past five years occurred in B.C., even though only one-third of the force's officers are stationed here. ...

Some of the report's other findings include [that] less than one-quarter (23 per cent) of the bullets RCMP officers fired at suspects in 2006 actually hit their target."


Here is a list of some incidents from January 2006 to March 2007, which are definitely not the finest moments of the Mounties.

"An internal RCMP report obtained by CBC News shows 80 people died while in police custody between 2002 to 2006, the majority due to alcohol intoxication or drug overdoses, according to the RCMP."

Death in custody Some examples:

Neil Stonechild, Kevin Geldart, Kevin St. Arnaud

Then there is the sad case of Robert Dziekanski, who "armed with a stapler" [sic] could not be subdued by four RCMP officers - according to their testimony - without tasering him several times, which killed him. (These officers did not speak the truth - under oath - as they had decided beforehand to use the taser.)

A website with links to major Canadian newspapers about abuse by Mounties (among other things) is here.

There are many subject headings including, Mounties Investigating Mounties, Attempted Cover Up, Excessive use of Force, Mounties Charged.