Fakers and Cons

Still adding to the list of Con fakery below, if you have more suggestions.
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Harper vs. Harper ... vs. Mulcair

Yes, about that ...



It's peculiar that Harper keeps insisting he first heard about his chief of staff Nigel Wright's $90,000 payment to Duffy on May 15 following "speculation in the media", given that CTV's Robert Fife had contacted the PMO the previous day to confirm it and the PMO responded. 
And you gotta love Steve taking credit for it coming out to the public here.



Asked whether he had spoken with his former press secretary now Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen, seen at top shielding Steve from reporters and who successfully moved to whitewash the report on Duffy, Steve replied he had not but that he agreed with the Senate recommendations - which were, of course, whitewashed.

He answered subsequent questions with "The Senate committee report is the Senate committee report." Nothing to do with cabinet or government, says Steve.

OK, that would be the Senate committee report that according to its Harper-appointed chair David Tkachuk :

"... you’ve got to remember I would have been having a number of discussions with Nigel, I had a few of them. He didn’t tell me to do anything, really. We discussed Mike and the situation that he was in. I mean, the Prime Minister’s Office was very concerned about this. They don’t like this scandal going on. It was hurting us politically. 

I talked to people in the PMO ... " 

Q: Can you say though that any of the Prime Minister’s Office’s advice ended up impacting how that report was written? 

A: Well, I don’t know, I suppose. It’s hard for me to say. It’s hard for me to say. Only because I asked for advice from many, many people, so it’s all in the report.

Meanwhile the Senate has responded to having its rewrite outed by putting the deleted parts back in and handing the whole thing over to the RCMP. 
Will all RCMP communications still need to be vetted by Vic Toews as per his 2011 mandate? 
Will all subsequent questions from anyone else be greeted with the usual  'Can't talk about it because it's now under investigation' ?



ETA : From Kristy Kirkup, national affairs editor for Sun Media




On Duffy's email that after he was paid off,  he was "staying silent on orders from the Prime Minister's Office", Steve doesn't know anything about that : “Mr. Speaker, these are not matters that I am privy to” - a Privy Council reference, perhaps? - and besides "Mike Duffy is no longer a member of our caucus."

Was Duffy's non-cooperation with Deloitte after receiving payment from the PMO part of the deal?

Steve doesn't even try for that one : "Mr. Duffy received no money from the PMO or the taxpayers of Canada." 
No, Mr. Duffy is just the beneficiary of the extraordinary largesse of Steve's own chief of staff over an issue that "was hurting us politically." Duffy used the payoff to stop co-operating with auditors and that allowed an all too willing senate steering committee to use it as the excuse to whitewash their report.

Mulcair : "When the chief of staff of the Prime Minister, in the course of his functions from the Prime Minister's Office, gives $90,000 to shut up a sitting senator, that's out of the Prime Minister's Office."

Well done, Mulcair. Best question period ever.
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Cons : "Well you didn't ask us."

In response to NDP questions on Monday regarding the missing $3.1 billion in public security and anti-terrorism spending and why even the words "public security and anti-terrorism" hadn't shown up in nine years of public accounts, Tony Gazebo of the Treasury Board blamed the opposition for not guessing the right question :

“If NDP caucus members from the years from 2001 to 2009 did not ask the right questions then that is their problem, not the problem on this side of the House.”

In February, Public SafetyMin Vic Toews used the same tactic. When questioned as to how the Cons managed to appoint Dr Arthur Porter - subject of an arrest warrant for fraud, money laundering and bribes/kickbacks in connection with SNC Lavelin - to head up the CSIS watchdog agency SIRC in 2010 without doing a sufficiently diligent security clearance on him first, Toews blamed the opposition parties for not stopping them from appointing a crook by not asking the right question :

"If there were any concerns that he had, he could have brought it to the attention of the appropriate authorities and simply asked the question. He failed in his responsibilities."

So from now on, all the opposition has to do is to try to guess which right questions are cleverly hidden under the Con security blanket.

Noon update : And even when reporters ask Tony Gazebo the right questions about government outsourcing ...

Star investigation: Millions in taxpayer-funded consulting work kept secret

A Star investigation has found 90 per cent of the $2.4 billion paid out in the past decade comes with no description of the work done — and more than a dozen departments refuse to provide details when pressed.

Vic Toews : To serve and protect the Con agenda

So after the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews tacked a few additional "terrorism" charges onto Omar Khadr's Canadian file that were not in his original conviction by the discredited Guantánamo Bay military tribunal (h/t Cathie from Canada): 

Ottawa’s file on Omar Khadr contains faulty information based on a memo prepared by a senior policy analyst for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews ... Among other things, the government alleges the late terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was an accomplice of a 15-year-old Khadr, and that the Canadian citizen killed two Afghan militia men. 

“Mr. Khadr engaged U.S. military and coalition personnel with small-arms fire, killing two members of the Afghan militia force. He threw and/or fired grenades at nearby coalition forces, resulting in numerous injuries to them.”

The assertions are important given they will help inform decisions Canadian prison and parole authorities make on Khadr. [Khadr's appeal coming up in July]

a Public Safety spokesy now opens the door to not releasing Khadr even if his Guantánamo conviction is overturned in the US :

"Canadian authorities insist they will decide what happens to Omar Khadr if his conviction for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan more than a decade ago is overturned in the United States. 

Lawyers for Mr. Khadr, now 26, said Friday they will appeal his guilty plea and conviction on murder and terrorism charges in a U.S. federal court that has already tossed out several similar Guantanamo military tribunal convictions."

In January, in what a number of public officials anonymously referred to as "highly unusual extraordinary political interference", the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews twice overturned a Canadian Press request for a phone interview with Khadr after it had already been approved by the warden at Millhaven where Khadr is being held, citing "access could pose a security risk".

Because a child soldier who has spent the last 10 years in Guantánamo since the age of 16 is naturally "a security risk" to Canada and must be silenced.

The request had been flagged by the Privy Council Office.

In another example of extraordinary political interference that came to light this week, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson ordered all senior Mounties to get clearance from Toews and his office before meeting with any MPs or senators via a liaison office that co-ordinates RCMP strategy with the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. (h/t DammitJanet!)

Last year Paulson told Liberal Senator Colin Kenny that he himself could not commit to a meeting until he got the stamp of approval from the Department of Public Safety. The meeting never took place.

Toews parlsec Candice Bergen, formerly Hoeppner, who introduced final reading of the Combating Terrorism Act in the House last week, explained on Friday:

"If parliamentarians need to, or want to, meet with RCMP or other officials, the appropriate place for them to do that is in parliamentary committees."

NDP MP Randall Garrison : 

"It's not appropriate for the government to reach into the police operation. It's a very, very fundamental part of what we must be assured exists so that the police aren't doing the work of the government, they're doing the work of the public." 

Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell said he feared the "politicization of the police force."

Bit late for that.

More on recent Toews RCMP Police State escapades : Montreal Simon and DammitJanet!

Fun fact : G&M Editor's note on Omar Khadr’s freedom in Ottawa’s hands despite U.S. appeal, Safety Minister insists : "An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Vic Toews as the Public Security Minister".

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The Combating Terrorism Act vs Justin Trudeau

On Thursday, three days after the Boston Marathon bombings, the Cons still had scheduled an opposition day for Monday - a day on which the opposition parties set the day's agenda. But then on Friday, an hour after learning that Justin Trudeau would spend it introducing his Backbenchers' Spring motion, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan suddenly announced that opp day was cancelled due to the vital national importance of debating the Combating Terrorism Act on Monday instead ... because of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Sure, whatever.

Notable that the S-7 Combating Terrorism Act would have passed already in its previous incarnations as Bill C-17 and C-19 if Steve hadn't prorogued Parliament. On September 22, 2010 the entire Liberal Party but one voted along with the Cons to pass C-17. Then on October 23 2012, the entire Liberal Party save 5 voted in favour of S-7.

Dear Libs : and this is why you can't be taken seriously as a credible opposition to Steve or a partner in any coalition against Steve. Prior to the last election, you expected to be given a pass for voting along with Steve hundreds of times owing to the fact you couldn't afford to bring down the government because you weren't ready to have an election. You don't have that excuse any longer. Really looking forward to hearing your cautious mousy noises against innocent citizens being incarcerated without trial before you all vote along with Steve once again, just so no one can call you soft on terrorism :

Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia said that the Liberals will be supporting Bill S-7 and noted that many of the original measures were first introduced by the Chretien government in 2001.

S-7. Let's suppose you know someone, perhaps your landlord or a colleague at work, that the government suspects may one day in the future commit an act of terrorism. You can be detained for up to 3 days without charge while being questioned. You don't get to hear, let alone challenge, any evidence given against you or your colleague, even if it's tortured out of someone you've never heard of in Syria, and you can be held without trial for a year if you don't co-operate.

Sure, you're a model citizen but are you sure you don't know any of these suspected terrorists for instance? ...

Building Resilience Against Terrorism : Canada’s Counter-terrorism Strategy
Public Safety Canada 2012 , introduced by Vic Toews :

"...domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."

which is merely a rehash of the language in :
2010 G8 Summit - Integrated Security Unit Joint Intelligence Group 
but minus the reference to "First nations' resource-based grievances" :
1a The Terrorist Threat
     1b The Public Order Threat

"The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville ... will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power ... 

"The important commonality is that these ideologies ... place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society. 

In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First nations'(sic) resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc."

 The G8/G20 - in which thousands of people got locked up for days for no reason whatsoever.

So who wants to see the G8/G20 pilot project experiment in "terrorism" law enforcement expanded into law right across Canada? 

The Cons have had this version of the terrorism bill lying around for months, just waiting for a day when they needed to change the channel, and today is that day - they've decided to have the third reading on embedding preventative arrest and secret trials in law for no other reason than to change the channel on Justin Trudeau. 
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10:45 Update : 
After watching the proceedings for an hour and a half now, I must apologize for writing re the Libs:

Really looking forward to hearing your cautious mousy noises against innocent citizens being incarcerated without trial before you all vote along with Steve once again, just so no one can call you soft on terrorism.

I take it back - they are not even bothering to do that much. 
Aside from the two Lib MPs questioning the timing of bringing this bill forward now to offset Trudeau's backbencher freedom motion, the only debate going on is among NDP MPs regarding provisions of the act. After opening remarks from Con Public Safety parlsec Candice Bergen, the Cons have not responded once. 

2pm Update : So "Operation Smooth", carried out by Homeland Security, FBI, and Canadian law enforcement, thwarted the Trainspotter Two without the benefit of the Combating Terrorism Act. Huh.
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Wednesday April 24 2013 Update : S-7 passes into law.

Libs and Cons - 183 Yes     vs      NDP, Bloc and Green - 93 No

Feb 2 2014 Update : C-44 - An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other Acts   Passed
Libs and Cons - 174 Yes       vs        NDP, Green - 81No
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Skynet : Connecting the dots

So remember how the Cons withdrew their just-tabled internet surveillance bill, the Lawful Access Act, on Feb 14 and replaced it an hour and 15 minutes later with the identical but renamed Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act , a bill which mentions neither children nor predators?

Coincidentally, the US Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 - sponsored by Texas teabaggin' Rep Lamar Smith who also sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act, another internet spying bill - has 39 co-sponsors and is heading off to the US House of Representatives for debate.

Good thing ours has that one-word difference in the title, the better to provide for Canadian independence and sovereignty.

Theirs :
House Panel Votes to Require ISPs to Keep Customer Records

"The Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act would require ISPs to retain all customer IP addresses [for 12 months, amended down from 18] so that law enforcement agents can use the information to investigate online child pornography. Law enforcement agents would gain access to the IP information with subpoenas they issue, not court-ordered warrants."

Hey, ours does that too!
Michael Geist yesterday :

Toews has not talked about a provision in Bill C-30 that creates a voluntary warrantless system that would allow police to ask for the content of emails or web surfing habits and allow ISPs to comply with the request without fear of liability.

Hey, Section 6 of the theirs does that too! As does SOPA.


So who else is looking to spy on us online?
From the Whitehouse National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy, January 2012 , pages 33-34:

"It is imperative that Canada and the United States work together to expedite the sharing of information from electronic communication service providers; and share information necessary to lay the foundation for intercepting internet and voice communications under their respective laws in a timely manner."

Meanwhile, across the pond, the UK isn't hiding their internet spying bill behind any malarkey about protecting children. Same basic mo though :
UK government to demand access to all phone and internet user data

"The British government is in the process of developing a scheme whereby all phone companies and broadband internet providers will be required to store customer transaction data for a year and hand it over to security services upon request."

Doesn't seem like it much matters who these various government online spying bills are purported to target - pornographers, copyright infringers, drug traffickers, drugbiz mirror sites, terrorists - or who they are supposed to protect - children, Hollywood, the recording industry, drug companies, the public at large. They'll just keep reframing and renaming those suckers until one of them sticks - a law we can't access the inner workings of that entrenches their access to our private info while simultaneously throttling the free flow of shared info out here.


In opposing the US pornography bill, Rep. John Conyers said : 

"This is not protecting children from internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country with a lot of other purposes."

Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren proposed an amendment to rename it the Keep Every Americans' Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act but sadly this did not accrue the required votes. Unlikely such a further name change would succeed here either, even with a one-word title change.
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Oh sting, where is thy death?

Following the Ottawa Citizen's attempted sting to determine who was behind the Vikileaks twitter account targeting Vic Toews last week, the House Speaker's Office patiently explained that really it could be any one of over 4,000 people :

"The HoC, like many organizations, uses a series of private IP addresses for its internal network.  Having said that, when users are using the internet, they are only identified with one of our four public IP addresses. To support this approach we use a concept called NAT (Network Address Translation). All users, on the Parliamentary Network (over 4000), when using the internet, are publicly identified with one of these four unique addresses. 

As an example, if we had 100 users using the internet at once from the HOC, they would all be identified with one of the four addresses. Hence, just by looking at the IP address that is used on the internet you cannot correlate this to a person from the organization. "

Gosh I'll bet the Cons feel pretty silly now that Angry Baird raved away six times in the House on Friday that the NDP was behind the “sleazy, dirty” internet campaign, huh?

Here's Steve's Parliamentary Secretary Dean Del Mastro talking about it on CTV's Question Period last night :

"Well we know that the Ottawa Citizen set up a bit of a trap and in fact it seems pretty clear that the NDP's behind it .... What the NDP have demonstrated is that they will punch below the belt repeatedly and it doesn't matter. They put on this facade that they are clean and lilywhite but I can tell you in this case what the NDP has done, we would never do. Shame on them and they should come out and admit who's behind it and frankly take responsibilty for what they have done. It's wrong.
We know this is from an NDP computer. They should come out and admit who has done it and take responsibility and apologise. Canadians do not appreciate this kind of attack ... etc etc" 

And so it goes ...
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Update : And in other Skynet surveillance news ...
UK government to demand access to all phone and internet user data

The British government is in the process of developing a scheme whereby all phone companies and broadband internet providers will be required to store customer transaction data for a year and hand it over to security services upon request.

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Gutter politics, you say?

So the government which used the private medical records of Vets activist Sean Bruyea and Vets Review Board member Harold Leduc to smear them, and the private government correspondence of diplomat Richard Colvin to smear him - the same government which defended its dirty phone tricks campaign as "vital free speech" according to Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan - is now going all Angry Baird that someone twittered already publicly available info about Toews in response to his Awful Access internet spying Act.

Really?

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews wants an investigation into someone repeating stuff about him that was already published in the MSM nearly four years ago?

What an absolutely awesome example of how they would use their Awful Access Act.
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Saturday. Updates from my betters :
CBC : Online surveillance bill opens door for Big Brother
Canadian Privacy Law Blog : The hidden gag order of Bill C-30

The very funny Tabatha Southey : If only Tory caucus walls could talk 

Jeff Jedras : Vikileaks and the death of the journalist as news gatekeeper

Not Quite Unhinged : Stop This Amateur IP Tracing Bullshit Now 

404 System Error : #OpKillBillz C-30


Dave and Boris , Dr. Dawg , Montreal Simon, Jeff Jedras , Dammit Janet!, Jymn, and Jymn 

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The Can't Be Arsed To Get a Warrant For That Final 5% Act

On CBC's The Current yesterday, internet law prof Michael Geist and Paul Gillespie, a former Toronto Police sergeant and CEO of Kids' INternet Safety Alliance, faced off on the potential for invasion of privacy afforded by the Lawful Access Act ... Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act ... Can't Be Arsed To Get a Warrant For That Final 5% Act

Partial transcript :

Gillespie explains the bill. Quote :

1)Requires service providers to give subscriber data to police upon request : name, unlisted phone #, IP address, without a warrant
2) If police have the authority, they should also have the ability to monitor peoples' communications
3) With a legitimate legal search warrant, be able to get the records logs
4) Compels service providers to store data

Michael Geist:

"If you look through the bill you don't find the words 'child pornography' anywhere because it's about far more than that.
On warrantless access to suscriber information - the reality is a warrant isn't always needed. Under current privacy law, telecom companies and internet companies have the power, the ability to provide the information, things like customer name and address information, without a warrant in appropreiate circumstances where it's part of an investigation. In fact according to RCMP data, they do so about 95% of the time. So in the overwhelming number of cases, they're already disclosing this information without any kind of court oversight. What we're talking about at the end of the day is that last 5%, instances where ISP or telecom companies say "We're not comfortable disclosing this subscriber information to you based on what you've shown us; come back with a warrant and we'll give you whatever you ask for."

That's been a bedrock principle we've had in Canada - it strikes the appropriate balance and really prevents potential fishing expeditions and prevents the prospect of a significant loss and erosion of the privacy balance we have in Canada." 

From Michael Geist's column, Feb 15 :

"[W]ith ISPs and telcos providing subscriber data without a warrant 95 percent of the time, there is a huge information disclosure issue with no reporting and no oversight. This is a major issue on its own, particularly since it is not clear whether these figures also include requests to Internet companies like Google and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The RCMP alone made over 28,000 requests for customer name and address information in 2010."

Meanwhile, be sure to Tell Vic Everything #

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Skynet - It's all about the children apparently

Net, cellphones; Police could probe without warrant

"Public Safety Minister Vic ["Torture Lite"] Toews said the law will give the tools to police to adequately deal with 21st-century technology, and said anyone opposing the laws favours "the rights of child pornographers and organized crime ahead of the rights of law abiding citizens."

Actually, Vic, we do favour the rights of child pornographers.  And organized crime. We have to if we favour the rights of everyone equally - which, if I recall correctly, is a bedrock conservative value.


Petition : STOP GOVERNMENT ONLINE SPYING
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Update : Write your MP

Dear [your MP here] : 

Vic Toews says our choice is between child pornographers and online surveillance. 

Fine. 

Your choice is between voting against the awful access bill and losing your seat in the next election. 

Sincerely, [You]

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Update 2 : U.S. seeks to mine social media

The U.S. government is seeking software that can mine social media to predict everything from future terrorist attacks to foreign uprisings, according to requests posted online by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. 

In a formal "request for information" from potential contractors, the FBI recently outlined its desire for a digital tool to scan the entire universe of social media - more data than humans could ever crunch.

The system sought by the research arm of the national intelligence director's office would fuse together everything from Web searches to Wikipedia edits to traffic webcams. 

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Torture : Twas brillig, saith the slithy Toews

"Twas brillig," saith the slithy Toews

"To waterboard outside our nabe."

All mimsy went the newsy slaves

To hear the mome rath outgabe :

"Tis Ethical Torture now, my son! -

The wires that shock for me and you.

I'm the mustache of John Bolton

And John Yoo is my new guru."

 Public Safety Minister Vic Toews explained his not particularly new torture directive for CSIS in the House :

 "Mr. Speaker, information obtained by torture is always discounted.  However the problem is whether one can safely ignore the information if Canadian lives and property are at stake."

~Dad, what does the minister mean by "torture is always discounted."

~Well, my son, probably around 15%. But once you advertise you're open for business in torture intel, the whole damned market explodes and then no one gets a decent discount.

CP via Pogge  : 

"The latest directive says in "exceptional circumstances" where there is a threat to human life or public safety, urgency may require CSIS to "share the most complete information available at the time with relevant authorities, including information based on intelligence provided by foreign agencies that may have been derived from the use of torture or mistreatment."

Here's the UN Convention Against Torture, to which we have been a signatory since 1984, on those "exceptional circumstances" :

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

One of the best wrap-ups on the actual harm torture-derived info has done to western intelligence and their agencies, quite apart from the evil or legalities, comes from David Rose at Vanity Fair : Tortured Reasoning. 

It ends with an interview with Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI since one week before 9/11 :

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”? 

“I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

Update : Dr. Dawg : Debating torture
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So what exactly is "perimeter security"?

As in Steve and Barry's new Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness?

None of our fracking business apparently, says the Public Safety Ministry.
Rather, it's "a matter of cabinet confidence."

Researcher Ken Rubin used federal Access to Information legislation to ask the Public Safety department for documents related to the definition of the term "perimeter security” in the context of the Canada-U.S. border.

Rubin also asked for documents defining the physical geographic borders, analyses that explain the implications of using the term “perimeter security,”and just how the term might be sold to us - but mostly he was just asking for a simple definition.
The department’s response was an unequivocal “no.”

In a letter written March 4, Public Safety officials said: “The records pertaining to your request have been entirely withheld.”

The department said the information could be injurious to international affairs, that it contained information developed for a government institution or minister, that it would provide an account of a government consultation, and that it is a matter of cabinet confidence."

No, it's a matter of public confidence.

Back in the fall Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ officials prepared a 14 page secret strategy for "big business groups and others" to "align supportive stakeholders to speak positively about the announcement" of the Shared Vision they were still keeping under wraps.

Even after a draft of it was leaked to the press in December, Steve still mustered the gall to stand in the House and deny opposition demands for more info by unequivocally denying its existence :

"There is no secret deal" and
"Canada already operates under what is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership with the United States and Mexico, something negotiated by the previous Liberal government."

Notable you should mention the SPP here, Steve, a deal designed to function entirely outside the purview of either Parliament or Congress.

So despite the fact Steve really really wants our input this time :

“We are committed to consulting with Canadians on the implementation of the shared vision for perimeter security and economic competitiveness,” said Minister of State Lebel.

... well, up until April 21st anyway ... Rubin wonders how we can possibly respond adequately if they don't want to tell us what perimeter security is.

Fortunately David Emerson has come up with a partial answer for us : "The primary security perimeter should ultimately be continental."
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Harper commemorates Montreal Massacre by axing gun tracing

Steve today : Montreal massacre was heinous crime

"That these women were gunned down for no other reason than their gender is as incomprehensible now as it was in 1989. While we cannot, and probably never will, be able to make sense of the events of that day, we can work to ensure that it never happens again.

Let us pay tribute to their memory in the best way that we can: by working to eliminate violence against women while making our communities safer for all Canadians."

Steve, one week ago : Gun tracing regulations delayed third time

"The Harper government has once again delayed implementation of regulations that police say they need to quickly trace guns used in crimes.
The government quietly posted a notice last Tuesday — one day before the firearms marking regulations were to have come into force — disclosing that implementation has been postponed until Dec. 1, 2012.

"The regulations are supposed to bring Canada into compliance with international protocols requiring import marks on all firearms."

This is the third time the Harper government has delayed regulations requiring gun manufacturers to note the origin and year a gun is imported into Canada to make them easier to trace - regulations which were supposed to go into effect in 2006.

This is not the long gun registry so you would think the lawn order™ Cons would support a registry to trace guns used in crimes.
But as 900 ft Jesus points out : How do you please your rabid base when two rabid base issues conflict?

The Canadian Shooting Sports Association (read : NRA) has apparently been "working tirelessly" to delay gun marking, along with regs for the use of firearms at gun shows :

"They are both now delayed until December of 2012 which gives us more time to resolve the negative impacts these regulations will have and, since there is the strong possibility of an election within the next 12 months, have them rescinded with a majority government.”

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the regulations have been postponed "to allow time for consultation to develop a workable regulatory package."

Because four whole years with a Federal Firearms Advisory Committee entirely reconstituted to only include gun buffs is not enough.

"Once upon a time, the Firearms Advisory Committee included experts from all sides of the gun debate. Former member Marilou McPhedran, principal of Global College at the University of Winnipeg and a lawyer specializing in women’s, children’s and disabled rights, says it was "evident that some members had ties to the U.S. National Rifle Association,” but meetings were substantive.

“When Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, a dramatic shift occurred,” says McPhedran. “I received a vague letter hinting at no more meetings, and I was never invited to another one."

Nor were reps from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Canadian Police Association and the Centre for Suicide Prevention.

First Mourn Then Organize: 21 years since the Montreal Massacre
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Stop the presses : Unreported crime up 3% over 5 years

Whenever he's faced with StatsCan reports showing a decrease in the crime rate, including the violent crime rate over the last decade, Public Safety Minister Vic lock-'em-up Toews always attempts to refute the evidence by claiming that the unreported crime rate is going up.
And that is presumably why we have to build more prisons to house all the unreported criminals.
I know, I know, but just bear with me for a moment.

On Steve Paikin's The Agenda this week, Toews stated :

"Quite frankly Canadians don't care what the crime rate is"

and went on to produce stats on his unreported crime meme :

"From 2004 to 2009, instead of 34% of crimes being reported to police, only 31% were. So what we are seeing is a gradual decline in confidence in the justice system."

Holy crap! A 3% increase in unreported crime over 5 years.

Toews also explains that "an apples to apples comparison of Canadian victimization surveys with American victimization surveys is the proper standard to use" and recommends everyone read the Vancouver Board of Trade Victimization Survey, which he says shows an increase in unreported crime.

Did that already actually, Vic, and blogged about it back in 2007. While applauding the addition of spousal violence to the survey, I'm not convinced we need more prison spaces to deal with other survey questions such as whether the questionnaire respondent has received unwanted emails or had a window or fence broken.

To Toews' claims of public safety being the Cons first priority, Paikin asks why then did the Cons scuttle their own crime bills by proroguing parliament?
Toews :

"Essentially as a result of prorogation we were able to reconstitute the committees in the Senate which would allow us to get the criminal bills through.

We're right on track with our agenda and now we don't have to worry about the unelected Senate impeding the will of the House of Commons."

[cough]Climate bill[cough]

Indeed, yesterday the Senate voted to make possession of 6 pot plants subject to a mandatory prison sentence.

But guess what, Vic, unreported crime (click the video viewer on the right at the link) is indeed getting a massive increased airing this week.
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Combating Terrorism Act passes 2nd reading

On the same day the nation was preoccupied with the national Con/Lib competition for votes to kill/preserve the long gun registry, the Libs and Cons got together to slip the Combating Terrorism Act through second reading in the House - 220 votes to 84 in a classic Con/Lib vs NDP/Bloc split -just ten minutes before the long gun vote.

The Libs and Cons may disagree on whether it is either useful or an egregious invasion of privacy and civil liberties that Canadians should have to spend a few minutes registering a long gun online, but when it comes to locking Canadians up for 12 months without a warrant or compelling them to appear before a court based on some anonymous tip, they're both just fine with that.

The right to remain silent, the right not to be jailed without charge, the right to know what the charges are against you - pfft!

In reintroducing Bill C-17 for the third time on Monday - to reinstate provisions from the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 - Justice Minister Rob Nicholson emphasized a fabulous new feature:

"The key here is that the person required to attend an investigative hearing is treated as a witness, not someone who is accused of a crime."

True, as long as your definition of "witness" includes being arrested if you don't comply and being detained for 72 hours if you do.

But what if you are also suspected of being likely to commit a terrorist crime some time in the future. Well, then :

"a judge can order the person's detention for up to 12 months."

But no worries. A brand new civil rights safety provision in this regurgitated version of 9/11 law stipulates that every 12 months the Attorney General and the Public Safety Minister - that would be Nicholson himself and Vic lock-'em-up Toews respectively - must "provide their opinions, supported by reasons, as to whether the operations of these provisions should be extended."

Liberal critic for Public Safety & National Security Mark Holland made some noises about balancing national security with individual liberty and how :

"the government has completely ignored most of the key recommendations that came from Justice O'Connor [re Maher Arar], which were supported by Justice Iacobucci and were repeated by the RCMP Public Complaints Commissioner Paul Kennedy"

but then two days later, he voted for it along with the rest of the Libs.

There were hours and hours of speeches in the House this Monday and Tuesday :

Lib Marlene Jennings said right off the bat on Monday that the Libs would be voting for C-17 to proceed to committee.

NDP Joe Comartin noted "there is no crime related to terrorism not already included in the Criminal Code."

Bloc Maria Mourani : Arar. CSIS supports info gained via torture. Why would we give them even more secret powers?

NDP Wayne Marston worried we were regressing to pre Magna Carta sensibilities.

Con Colin Carrie accused "the coalition" of being "soft on terror".

Bloc Serge Ménard noted that under the War Measures Act "almost all candidates who ran against Mayor Drapeau [in the Montreal elections] were incarcerated. A law which goes so far as to incarcerate political opponents has already been used once in our history," he said.

NDP Don Davies brought up the "preventative arrest of 1,100 Canadians arrested at G20 for simply walking in the street" and asked why a government so against turning people into criminals for refusing to answer the long form census was at the same time happy to lock people up for refusing to answer questions based merely on suspicions?

Lib Derek Lee said Canadians already don't have the legal right to remain silent. (he's wrong about that.)

NDP Bill Siksay noted that security certificates were intended to expedite deportation of non-citizens yet they have been used instead to jail people for up to eight years without a trial. Slippery slope.


As I said - hours and hours of debate.
But then NDP Libby Davies wondered why there were hundreds of pages in newspapers across the country dealing with the gun registry but not one mention of the debate on the Combating Terrorism Act.

Good question, Libby.
The papers were full of the return of the House and Slagging Period, in which C-17 was not mentioned, yet whenever the Cons and Libs get together to pass something really draconian, like the Canada Colombia FTA or this Bill C-17, suddenly the media loses all interest.

Here's another question. After much initial fanfare about how important this bill is in the fight against 'terrists', and with the Libs onside since June 2009, the Cons have allowed it to languish in limbo for the last 15 months. Now it's the first government order to be put before the House this week. Why is that?
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Prince of Pot's US prosecutor: "Our pot policy is dangerous and wrong"

Friday, Sept 10 Update : Sentenced. Five years.

In a guest column in the Seattle Times last Friday, the former US attorney who indicted Marc Emery in 2005 for selling pot seeds over the internet wrote :

"The U.S. war against marijuana has failed and actually threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions. Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong .... the law has failed, the public is endangered, no one in law enforcement is talking about it and precious few policymakers will honestly face the soft-on-crime sound bite in their next elections."

This includes our own homegrown cowards, principally Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Rob Nicholson, who had Marc Emery, a Canadian citizen, deported to the US in May to serve a five-year sentence that will begin next week.

As Lib MP Ujjal Dosanjh put it back in March when he joined forces with Con MP Scott Reid and NDP MP Libby Davies to present petitions from 12,000 Canadians in the HoC asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson not to sign extradition papers :

"It appears to me that we have assisted a foreign government arrest a man for doing something that we wouldn't arrest him for doing in Canada."

The rhetoric from the DEA at the 2005 bust was absurd :

"Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets.

Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."

In a letter to his wife Jodie yesterday, Emery remarks on the importance of getting supporters to write to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the US DoJ for the Saturday Sept 18th Marc Emery Support Day. I don't care if you don't smoke pot - I don't smoke pot - but write a letter or support a rally on Sept.18th. I'll stick up a reminder then.

History, ironically aided by his former prosecutor, is already moving to vindicate Emery. Too bad he still has to serve the time so that Canada can continue to suck up to the phony US War on Drugs.

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Tamils! Terrorists! Tuberculosis!

Boris has already eviscerated Public Safety Minister Vic Toews performance on CBC, with a link to a good post by EFL also, but I was more appalled by the choice of questions CBC put to him.

490 out of the 80,000 Tamils languishing in camps in Sri Lanka made it to Canada after three months at sea and here are the questions Rosemary Barton put to Toews, after an initial mention of possible terrorism :

Australia managed to turn back this boat, and in our case we weren't able to turn back this vessel. Why can't we not do that?
Shouldn't we be able to turn back ships before they get into Canadian waters?
Are you not concerned that by welcoming this vessel ... possible terrorists ... into Canadian waters, you are sending the wrong message to deter criminals?
How confident are you that your intelligence on the people on this boat is accurate? What about these people jumping the queue?
Again, why not just keep the boats out of Canadian waters?

So, Barton, were you attempting to trap Toews into hyperbole here or was this an example of The House Organ for Bigots, Racists, and Xenophobes?
Up to 30,000 refugees are processed in Canada every year but by all means let's take this opportunity to go fucking apeshit about 490 Tamils arriving "illegally".

P.S. No tuberculosis says BC Health Authority.

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$13-million an hour for three days

That's the security budget for Steve's upcoming billion dollar bunfest.

Could go even higher says Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

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Originally pitched to us at $179-million, the cost of G8/G20 security is now creeping up to a billion dollars.

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"I understand that the Liberals don't believe in securing Canadians or the visitors here," Toews told the House yesterday. "We're different."

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How different are they?

Well, by comparison, an hour and a half's worth of our security budget this time round would have paid for the entire security bill for the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, which clocked in at $18-million US.

An hour and a half's worth.

But then the US has never been all that concerned about security, have they?

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Bonus BS : For the G20 portion of the show, Toronto will be locked down, the CN Tower will be closed, and the Toronto Blue Jays will have to play in Philadelphia. Nothing is too much trouble to protect our safety.

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Bonus irony : Among the list of topics at the billion dollar bunfests will be how to battle poverty and get government spending under control.

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A wide variety of "No comments"

from the scandal we wish everyone would quit calling "Cadscam" :

On Wednesday Harper's office released a statement : "The then-leader of the Opposition [Harper] looked into the matter with party officials and could find no confirmation."

You will recall that former Con MP John Reynolds, who was also Harper's campaign manager, facilitated the meeting at which Finlay and Flanagan are alleged to have offered the $1M bribe to the late Chuck Cadman.

Asked about the incident, former Conservative MP John Reynolds told Canwest News Service he did not wish to comment.
"I'm not involved in politics anymore,"said Mr. Reynolds. "I have no comment at all."

Later Reynolds remarked to CBC : "the story seems fishy." and "Sounds to me like some kind of fiction story."

OK then, anyone else?

"Ryan Sparrow, a Conservative party spokesman, refused to comment on the allegations."

"Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he's never heard anything about any buyout. "I've never even spoken with Chuck Cadman," he said."

"Jay Hill, now the Conservative government whip and Opposition whip at the time of the vote in question, told NaPo he had never heard of the events," which he also characterized later as a case of "unfortunate miscommunication" and "a so-called make-believe fairy-tale scandal."

Con MP and Treasury Board chairman Vic Toews : "He [Cadman] cared about legislation not money. We've heard this story for years. It's bullshit."

Defence Minister Peter MacKay was deputy Con leader at the time of the alleged offer : "I don't know anything about how this has come about. Certainly it was something that I was not involved with,'' said MacKay, "I think it's sad, quite frankly, that this seems to have come up. It's very unfortunate.''

Ok, so it didn't happen but if it did, it isn't true. Got it.

Update : Chet reminds me in comments that the $1M meeting and the Flanagan/Finlay meeting are not one and the same meeting. Allegedly two days apart in fact. Quite right, my bad. I think I keep forgetting that little detail because it has that - oh no, it was two completely other guys who did that - whiff about it. Thanks, Chet.

Upperdate : Ok, now we're back to just one meeting again. Allegedly.

Pasta la vista, baby

The RCMP are looking into new claims regarding Brian Mulroney and the $300,000 he was paid by arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber back in '93 to, um, promote a pasta business Schreiber was interested in. Mr.Mulroney says "he was paid the money for private business dealings and was late paying income tax on the three $100,000 payments he received from Mr. Schreiber because he was traumatized by allegations made against him by the RCMP".

He didn't actually mention the $300,000 in the first RCMP go round of course but he was still so traumatized at the time that we had to pay him a $2.1 million libel settlement.

So far the RCMP are holding a preliminary examination that might lead to opening a formal investigation, and Harper, who is also apparently mentioned in Schreiber's affadavit, is going to appoint someone to advise him on how narrow a scope a full inquiry can have while still being, uh, 'full'.

Also at issue for Steve are the two letters containing the affadavit information allegedly sent to Harper by Schreiber in March and again in September - letters that were vetted by the 35 members of the Privy Council Office, apparently hired for the express purpose of just not getting the whole stove-piping thing.
Back in January, the Justice Department prepared Airbus coaching notes for the current Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who was formerly a parliamentary secretary with Mulroney : "Neither I nor my predecessor, the Honourable Vic Toews, received any briefing material related to this issue.''

And Harper stated this week that he was not about to become Schreiber's "penpal".

Unfortunately Mulroney sounds like he's getting set to feel traumatized all over again anyway.
Here is his statement {emphasis mine}:

"Twelve years ago to the day, I was trying to deal with very grave and damaging accusations against me, contained in a letter sent to the Swiss authorities. These accusations were related to the sale in 1988 of Airbus planes to Air Canada, back then a Crown Corporation.

After a tough and lengthy battle against these false and horrendously libellous accusations, the government of the day had to admit that they had absolutely no evidence to support them, and apologized to me and my family. In addition, they had to reimburse me of all my legal and other expenses.

Twelve years later, the same people at the CBC and at certain other media organizations who were at the origin of the 1995 accusations are still conducting their vendetta. Last Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided that he needed the counsel of an independent third party to advise him on the course of action to follow after new allegations were made in an affidavit filed by Karlheinz Schreiber from his prison cell where he is detained pending the execution of an extradition order confirmed twice by the Supreme Court of Canada.

I will fully co-operate with the special adviser soon to be appointed by the Prime Minister, but I have come to the conclusion that in order to finally put this matter to rest and expose all the facts and the role played by all the people involved, from public servants to elected officials, from lobbyists to the police authorities, as well as journalists, the only solution is for the government to launch a full-fledged public commission of inquiry which would cover the period from 1988 to today.

Only then will the whole truth be finally exposed and tarnished reputations restored. I am willing to meet the special adviser to reiterate my conviction that this is the only way to prove to Canadians that I have done nothing wrong."
G&M