Quotulatiousness

October 17, 2012

Dalton McGuinty’s “legacy”

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:36

All the media chatter about Premier Dalton McGuinty running for leader of the federal Liberals must be coming from folks who want to watch a national train wreck, says Michael Den Tandt:

Set aside that, with nine years as premier of Canada’s most populous province, constituting more than one-third of the national population, McGuinty would be past his best-before date at the best of times.

And let’s ignore his long track record of broken promises, beginning shortly after he was elected on a solemn vow to run balanced budgets and hold the line on taxes. He made that promise in writing. He broke it without a shred of visible remorse, blaming the other guys.

Let’s set aside the e-Health scandal, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. scandal, the eco-tax affair, and the continuing Ornge air ambulance scandal. While we’re at it, let’s wave off the abrogation of the rule of law in Caledonia. That’s all old news.

Forget the voluminous independent study by economist Don Drummond, who found, in a nutshell, that McGuinty’s entire approach to government in the previous eight years had been wrong-headed, slipshod and ruinously wasteful. Drummond recommended a radical course correction. McGuinty nodded sagely, kindly even, and ignored him.

We could even try — come on now, let’s do this — to ignore the Green Energy Act. This was the ideologically driven plan, still in place, to create an artificial market for “green” energy and erect thousands of 50-storey industrial wind turbines across Ontario, destroying the landscape for the sake of energy that only flows when the wind blows — that is, intermittently.

[. . .]

Let’s set aside, also, the cloying, nanny-state condescension of McGuinty’s approach to leadership — never a principle too firm to be melted into formless goo, never a controversy too sharp to be smothered in a warm quilt of apple-pie hokum. Never mind that, temperamentally, McGuinty is Mitt Romney without the millions. These are intangibles.

June 11, 2012

Why should we celebrate the War of 1812?

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Liberty, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:34

Wayne K. Spear has an answer in the National Post:

An honest and candid assessment of the period 1812-1814 will show that the war was started on false grounds, by American jingoists and super-patriots, as Simpson asserts. However, once started, the people of Upper and Lower Canada had good reason to fight. Also, while the war was lost by the inept and over-confident Americans as much as it was won by the British and the Canadians — and the Canadiens — the character and accomplishments of — for example — Major General Isaac Brock were what they were. The 1814 Treaty of Ghent confirmed the pre-war, and indeed post-Revolution, territories and borders of British North America and the United States, and while the Harper government will tell you that peace followed as a result and ever since, the fact may well be that the Americans would have accomplished at a later date what they could not accomplish in 1812-1814, had they not had vast western and southern frontiers to divert their apparent boundless attention and energy.

In other words, the legacy of the war was neither territorial nor geopolitical, but rather psychological. After 1814 the occupants of territories north of the 49th parallel were possessed of what is today termed “Canadian identity,” which may be summarized in the phrase “not American”. Although there has been peace between Canada and the United States ever since 1814, suspicion and a vague condescension toward the Americans was henceforth a permanent feature of the Canadian psyche. An early example of the Canadian apprehension of Uncle Sam — and of the Canadian habit of arriving at self-understanding by looking south — can be found in Thomas Haliburton’s acerbic 1836 novel The Clockmaker. In this work the satire cuts both ways, reflecting a deeper and uncomfortable awareness that Canada must either side with Britain or else be absorbed by America.

In the preceding paragraph I have stated that “after 1814 the occupants of territories north of the 49th parallel were possessed of what is today termed Canadian identity.” There is of course a large and important exception, the indigenous peoples of this land. One of the principal immediate causes of the war was the growing conflict between a brutal and expansionist settler population and its indigenous resistance, among whose most famous leaders in 1812 was Tecumseh. In the three decades leading up to 1812, the Haudenosaunee (like Tecumseh’s people, and indeed all indigenous groups) had been dispossessed of their land base at an alarming rate. The 1812 war offered an opportunity to extract concessions from Britain and Canada through military alliance, a strategy which had served the League in the past and might do so again. It was a military alliance with Britain, during the American Revolution, which yielded to the Six Nations the Haldimand Tract, in Ontario. Ninety-five percent of this land would eventually revert to Canada through a series of transfers, some of which are held by the Six Nations to have involved deception and outright theft. (The current-day Caledonia dispute is a direct legacy of this period.) Not a promising record, but in 1812 military alliances still counted for something, and then as now there were things for which it was worth fighting.

October 7, 2011

Matt Gurney: Caledonia, the election issue that wasn’t

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

After a quick run-down of why the Tories blew the election (their bucket of snot campaign offerings that differed only in slight degree from the Liberals) Matt Gurney explains why McGuinty’s win is tragic:

It’s because of one word, a word that was barely spoken during the campaign: Caledonia.

The story is familiar, but warrants recapping: In 2006, sections of that small town were occupied by Six Nations native “protestors” (read: thugs) who were protesting the development of a new subdivision that the thugs believed encroached on their land. The native thugs terrorized local residents, driving some from their homes. Citizens, and police officers, were assaulted. Public property was destroyed.

The Ontario Provincial Police did nothing, despite the palpable shame of many of the officers who were clearly humiliated at standing by and doing nothing while the law was flagrantly broken before their eyes. It was clear to any observer that they had been ordered to simply keep the sides separated and not worry too much about such trivialities such as arresting criminals and detaining them until the Crown could lay charges. They were, as Dalton McGuinty told our editorial board last month, peacekeepers. As he said then, he wished he could give them all a blue helmet.

Nice, fluffy sentiment. Premier Dad at his best. But there’s a problem with it: The police are not peacekeepers. That’s the military’s job. The job of the police is to enforce the law. And it’s not a small difference. Our entire civilization hinges upon the public trusting the government to maintain the lawful peace and at least a rough approximation of justice. In Caledonia, the Liberals didn’t even try.

July 13, 2011

A bit more on the Caledonia settlement

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

The National Post looks at the shameful way the Ontario government has acted through the confrontation in Caledonia:

This week’s settlement of a class-action lawsuit fits right in with the government’s modus operandi. Four years after the suit was filed, Mr. McGuinty’s Liberals will pay a group of residents and business owners $20-million in recompense for the disruption that was caused when the Ontario Provincial Police elected to ignore the rampant violence and lawbreaking that accompanied the aboriginals’ illegal seizure of land. The money will be divided among about 800 claimants, according to a formula related to their proximity to the occupied territory and exposure to acts of violence. As usual, the province has done its best to gag any complaints by insisting that details of the agreement remain confidential.

The class-action suit specified four instances at the height of the dispute in which roads were closed, court injunctions were violated and a hydro-electric transformer was burned. But those were just a sampling of the many episodes in which police, acting under clear instruction, blatantly ignored the aboriginals’ contempt for the law. Families were terrorized, threatened, driven from their homes or forced to show aboriginal “passports” to gain access to their own neighbourhoods. It was like a scene from some balkanized tin-pot regime, in other words — local residents might be inclined to call it the Banana Republic of Ontario.

Donna Reid, a Caledonia resident who has been among the most critical of the government, dismissed the settlement as “hush money” by a Liberal administration that is facing re-election and wants the issue to go away. The amount received by most residents will do little to offset five years worth of disruption that has embittered relations and turned part of the town into a no-go area.

July 12, 2011

Settling the Caledonia issue . . . in time for the provincial election

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:12

Christie Blatchford finds the timing of the settlement to be “arguably suspicious”:

The last page of the Caledonia class action settlement is the one that tells the shameful truth of what happened five years ago in that lovely small southwestern Ontario town.

The settlement was the result of a lawsuit against the government and the Ontario Provincial Police filed by 440 residents, 400 businesses and a handful of sub-contractors affected by the native occupation there five years ago.

The deal has been repeatedly portrayed purely as a “compensation” package since it was formally announced by the Ontario government last Friday.

The government’s brief press release used carefully neutral language: The settlement is called an “agreement” which “provides compensation” for those who suffered “direct losses” during the course of “the protest.”

It is, in a word, bunk.

January 16, 2011

Caledonia discussed on “The Agenda”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 22:13

Publius has a post up with the interview of Christie Blatchford, author of Helpless on Steve Paikin’s TVO show The Agenda.

December 8, 2010

Worried about your upcoming citizenship test? Publius has the answers for you

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, History, Humour, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

Publius has done all the hard work for you so you can ace the new citizenship test:

So from the mouth of well meaning ignorance, how would a typical Canadian fare on Mr Kenney’s new immigration test? Thanks to the vast resources of this blog, and its network of agents and correspondents through out the Dominion, we have located the typical Canadian. He’s a male in his late thirties and lives in Kenora. Which I think is in Alberta. But from Toronto it’s hard to tell. We brought the typical Canadian to our high-tech testing center at the corner of Center St and Universe Ave, in downtown Toronto. Here is the test. And here is the typical Canadian’s answers:

– Identify four (4) rights that Canadians enjoy.

The right to complain about the weather. The right to complain about how taxes are too high. The right to complain that the government isn’t spending enough money on me or my community. The right to stand in the middle of the cookie aisle at Loblaws and block everybody’s way (I know who you are).

-Name four (4) fundamental freedoms that Canadians enjoy.

The freedom to speak, unless it offends a politically influential minority group. The freedom to own property, unless it offends a politically influential environmental group. The freedom to protest, unless it offends visiting dignitaries. The freedom to bitch about the weather, unless it offends a co-worker who is a ski-nut.

[. . .]

-What did the Canadian Pacific Railway symbolize?

That graft, corruption, political manipulation, juvenile anti-Americanism, and screwing over people who don’t live in Ontario and Quebec, has been a Canadian tradition since the beginning.

-What does Confederation mean?

Like federation but with more “con” in it. Like transfer payments.

[. . .]

-What is the role of the courts in Canada?

To uphold the laws of Canada, unless it conflicts with their personal political beliefs. At that point they just make stuff up, and then use some latin terms to cover their tracks.

-In Canada, are you allowed to question the police about their service or conduct?

Yes, but not during the APEC conference, the G20, or if you’re living in Caledonia.

November 30, 2010

Stinson: Fantino ideal for Tories

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:13

Scott Stinson thinks that Julian Fantino’s victory in yesterday’s Vaughan by-election is great for the Tories’ “tough on crime” rhetoric:

Here’s what Mr. Fantino, who won a byelection on Monday to end a 22-year Liberal hold on the riding of Vaughan, had to say five years ago in response to a weekend of gun violence in Toronto, where he was chief at the time.

“People don’t like me talking about stiffer sentences,” he told the Post. “But in actual fact, so many of the people we deal with have been given but a kiss by the system, and I would say that the majority of them are all career criminals.”

Chief Fantino’s solution? A 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for gun-related crimes. Why, it’s the kind of thing that must put a twinkle in Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s eye.

[. . .]

And it’s the stuff for which Mr. Fantino has most recently been hotly criticized — allowing two-tiered policing at Caledonia, where native occupiers were allowed to break the law indiscriminately at a disputed housing development and his Ontario Provincial Police effectively abandoned the area rather than risk confrontation — that suggests he’s used to following orders.

The Ontario government didn’t want any trouble in Caledonia, and thanks to the see-no-evil strategy employed by its police force, it has so far avoided an Oka-type battle down in Haldimand County. That this tactic saw the OPP giving passes to the same criminals for whom Mr. Fantino would typically demand harsh punishment apparently did not trouble the force’s former commissioner. He seemed OK giving them “but a kiss by the system.” He was being a team player.

For someone carrying such a “tough on crime” reputation, he has an odd view of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other trivial matters when they’re being exercised by the citizenry. Due process? Not something he appeared to care much about during his time at the OPP.

Update: Of course, no day is complete without someone trying to encourage the Liberals to bump off Michael Ignatieff:

Itching to see last night’s federal byelection result in Vaughan blown completely out of proportion? High-profile cop defeats Liberal nobody — when will Michael Ignatieff commit ritual seppuku next to the Centennial Flame? That sort of thing? The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson has the goods for you.

November 29, 2010

Blatchford: “Fantino wasn’t ‘there for the little guy’ in Caledonia”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

It’s probably safe to say that Christie Blatchford isn’t a fan of Julian Fantino, the Conservative candidate in the Vaughan by-election:

Now when Gary McHale, then of Richmond Hill, first poked his nose into the occupation that was going on in the town of Caledonia south of Hamilton, and began in late December, 2006, organizing rallies for those who objected to the way the Ontario government and the OPP were handling the occupation, Mr. Fantino had just taken over as the OPP boss.

He immediately demonized Mr. McHale, not a Caledonia resident, as “an outsider” with “an agenda.”

In a flood of internal e-mails to the officers who worked for him (these later were made public as a result of Mr. McHale’s various disclosure requests in court) and in his public statements, the then-commissioner went to remarkable lengths to characterize Mr. McHale and his supporters, to borrow from one of the e-mails Mr. Fantino sent, as “interlopers who put their own personal agendas” ahead of the purportedly grand peace efforts at the negotiating table.

It was an astonishing use of the resources of the state against a private citizen who had done nothing but exercise the very freedoms guaranteed by the Charter.

Of course, what made Fantino such a “great cop” is exactly why the Conservatives want him on their team:

But the point is, for a man hailed as the Conservatives’ hot new law-and-order fellow, there are some real questions about his credentials, at least as they showed themselves in Caledonia where the rule of law was shattered, and a rather terrifying indication of his willingness to turn the full beam of his attention and power upon individuals whose only sin is to disagree with him.

In this regard, I’m afraid, Mr. Fantino seems a sadly good fit for a party whose approach to law-and-order strikes me increasingly as cartoonish.

It must be pointed out, however, that the Liberals also tried to recruit Fantino to run for them. That reflects just as badly on Michael Ignatieff’s party as it does on Stephen Harper’s party.

If he is elected by the voters of Vaughan, he’s rumoured to be a shoo-in for a cabinet position. That says it all for the federal Conservatives.

November 25, 2010

Publius argues against Julian Fantino’s candidacy in Vaughan

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:50

Publius thinks that Julian Fantino does not deserve the easy ride he’s getting in his attempt to win the Vaughan by-election:

The image of the crime-fighting crusader contrasts sharply with the OPP’s inaction during the occupation of the Douglas Creek Estate. Fantino’s status as a star candidate for the Conservative Party belies opposition from genuine conservatives.

In his four years in power Stephen Harper has played bait and switch with the Canadian electorate. He has talked of conservative values, and fear mongered on the dangers of a Liberal-NDP coalition government, while running a government which is fiscally to the Left of those of Paul Martin and Jean Chretien. In Julian Fantino he has again offered Canadians a false bill of goods, a law and order candidate who, as OPP commissioner, failed to uphold basic law and order.

What has allowed the Prime Minister to get away, so far, with the candidacy of Julian Fantino is the near silence the MSM has offered on the Caledonia tragedy. With the honourable exception of Christie Blatchford, the media has largely ignored the near anarchy which persisted for years in a Canadian small town, all within driving distance of Toronto. Canadian television journalists should long ago have stopped, if only for a moment, chasing down crooked used car salesmen, and paid attention to what should have been the biggest news story of the last five years. Placing the violence of Caledonia in Canadian living rooms, might have ended the tragedy and pain much sooner.

November 18, 2010

Another Helpless excerpt

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:09

I picked up my copy of Helpless yesterday at the no-longer-accurately named World’s Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto. It appeared to be the only copy, and was well-hidden in a corner of the Canadian Political Science section, on the next-to-bottom shelf, partly hidden by other books. I’m sure that’s just a co-incidence.

The third in the series of excerpts being run by the National Post. This is a question from Detective Sergeant Roger Geysons, who was president of number 3 branch of the Ontario Provincial Police Association:

“Are OPP members allowed on DCE? Can you provide to our members written direction?”

OPP deputy chief Chris Lewis answered.

“We’ll address that,” he said. “This is actually news to me that this was still an issue. There is obviously a communication issue.”

Then Lewis delivered a bombshell: “Short of somebody having a kid kidnapped and running onto the DCE, we’re not going to go onto that property. It’s just a recipe for disaster, and it will set things back there.”

Lewis also confirmed that the Aboriginal Relations Team (ART) was still calling the shots — which meant, to those in the know, that the occupiers were still running the show.

“There may be times that we have to go on there,” Lewis said, “but at the same time, we’ll do it and negotiate that through ART [to] the leaders in the First Nations community.”

He also said that the OPP would respond to calls — meaning emergencies — on the Sixth and Seventh lines, but general patrols would not take place in that area because “they [Six Nations] can’t control all the people in their community . . . So it’s a commonsense issue, and certainly, we’re not saying we will never go on there, but we really have to be very selective of when we do and how we go about it.”

Another fan of Christie Blatchford’s Helpless

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:47

Father Raymond J. deSouza points out that the actions of the OPP in Caledonia have ended up hurting peaceful native and non-native Ontarians:

If you are pressed for time, abandon this column now and immediately read the excerpt in these section from Christie Blatchford’s new book, Helpless. In that book, she details how two-tier justice came to Caledonia, Ont., in 2006 — immunity for native Canadians; and neglect, contempt and harassment for the non-native victims of crime. It is a scandalous tale, simply told.

[. . .]

Lest anyone think that Blatchford’s book is an attack on native aspirations, consider who suffers the most when lawlessness is permitted in native communities: the natives who live there. Not enforcing the law in native communities puts out a large welcome mat for organized crime and corruption.

[. . .]

Yet Blatchford’s book is not about native issues. It’s about the failure of the provincial government and the OPP to enforce the laws — even after a judge issued an injunction to end the illegal activity. Moreover, it’s about the OPP’s abuse of power. The most disturbing pages are about Julian Fantino, then OPP commissioner and now Conservative candidate in a federal byelection, who came perilously close to using police force to restrict the liberties of a free citizen with the temerity to protest the OPP’s policy of non-enforcement in Caledonia.

I noted with disgust that the federal Conservatives had not only nominated Julian Fantino for their candidate in the byelection, but were being quite open about protecting him from questions on his conduct of the Caledonia affair. If I’d ever considered voting for a Conservative candidate in the next federal election, that alone would make me reconsider.

November 17, 2010

“My plan is to make you guys look like a bunch of assholes”

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

More of Christie Blatchford’s Helpless from the National Post series of excerpts:

“We’ve been sitting there pretty much most of the morning looking for ya, just because we wanted to have a couple words with ya.” He added that police had “some concerns today for you and the safety of the community,” and “it’s our belief that if you or anybody else attempts to erect flags or ribbons directly across from Douglas Creek Estates, that it may cause a confrontation, and we can’t let that happen, and we won’t let that happen.

“We will allow you to raise flags and ribbons, just not across from the Douglas Creek Estates. Okay, and anybody that — anybody that attempts to do that, to raise those flags and ribbons in that restricted area, will be arrested for breach of the peace.”

McHale, of course, asked, “So have the natives been arrested for putting up their flags?”

“They have not,” Cowan replied.

“Why?” McHale asked. “You said ‘anyone.’ Your words were ‘Anyone who tries to put up flags will be arrested for breach of the peace.’”

“That’s today I’m talking about,” Cowan replied.

Around and around they went, with McHale pressing his point and Cowan’s only answer for it that, when natives put up their flags, it was “a long time ago.”

“And I’m not here to comment on that,” Cowan said. “I’m just telling you what our plan is today, and that’s what my purpose is.”

“Well,” McHale said, “you know what my plan is.”

“What is your plan?” Cowan asked.

“My plan is to make you guys look like a bunch of assholes,” McHale said, “and you’ve done a great job [of helping achieve that]. The media will be here, and it will be quite clear to all Canadians across this country, because they will see the native flag. The cameras will show the native flag. And you’ll be there, and your officers will be there, saying, ‘If you put up a Canadian flag, we will arrest you.’”

November 16, 2010

Helpless

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:17

The National Post is publishing some exerpts from Christie Blatchford’s latest book, Helpless:

But now, occupiers were showing up in force, at least a dozen of them converging on the lone OPP officer, who had already determined that the driver had no licence, no permit and no insurance — oh, and that the car had no plates. He called for backup, a plea that, in the normal course of events in the policing world, usually brings an enormous, instantaneous, gut-level response: Every cop who can get there does.

No one arrived.

In what was probably the single most important early indicator of how the OPP was disintegrating from within, its officers were no longer answering a call for help from one of their own. The constable had been left to fend for himself.

Furious, heartsick, he did what he could — cautioned the driver — and left before things got ugly. Back at the station, he filed a formal complaint. Within a matter of weeks, he was verbally disciplined for having created a possible “flashpoint.”

It was a sign of things to come. The occupation was just a month old, and whenever OPP officers dared speak up about the way things were going, they were slapped down.

November 14, 2010

Life replicates art, kinda

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Education, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

As one of the comments on this article in The Cord points out, it’s highly ironic that “at a speech about a book detailing how the police did nothing to uphold the laws of the land the university did exactly the same thing.”

What was scheduled as a speech by Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford turned sour tonight as protesters opposing the journalist’s new book Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us took over the stage.

Three protesters locked themselves together at the centre of the stage where Blatchford was meant to speak at the University of Waterloo’s (UW) Humanities Theatre in Hagey Hall, with another individual acting as their “negotiator”. A fifth, Tallula Marigold, acted as the group’s media representative.

“We don’t want people who are really, really racist teaching [the people we love],” said Marigold of Blatchford. “And we don’t want that person to have a public forum because it makes it dangerous for others in the public forum.”

If nothing else, the passion of the protesters has persuaded me that I must buy and read Blatchford’s latest book . . .

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