statism watch

Allison Hanes, The National Post
June 03, 2008

Mayor David Miller reluctantly accepted a compromise yesterday to allow two Toronto shooting ranges in city facilities to continue to exist — but only if they move to private clubs.

The Mayor had earlier supported a call for the Scarborough Rifle Club, housed at the Don Montgomery Community Centre for three decades, and the Canadian National Rifle Association Gun Club, located in the rafters of Union Station since the 1920s, to be evicted from city premises.

Had a concession not been offered, the clubs’ survival would have been threatened since the executive committee also voted yesterday to ban the establishment of new private gun ranges in Toronto.

But after a six-hour debate where dozens of members of gun clubs defended their organizations’ records and the integrity of their sport, Mr. Miller said it was only “fair” to permit a grandfather clause.

“There are other gun clubs in Toronto on private property and we can’t legally zone them out of existence,” he said.

“It’s unfair to the ones that are on city property to not at least allow them the opportunity to seek the same status.”

After speaking passionately about the grief of parents whose children have been gunned down, Mr. Miller said his ultimate goal is still to have no guns in Toronto, since 85,000 guns have been reported stolen nationwide in Canada, 44,000 of them handguns.

“My preference would be to have no gun clubs in the city of Toronto,” he said. “If you want to stop gun violence you have to do everything you can to eliminate the availability.”

Tom Bradbeer, the president of the CNRA Gun Club at Union Station, was lukewarm to the olive branch the executive committee extended, saying he had to speak to his group’s board members.

“It will be expensive for us,” he said. “We would not be able to afford this going into a private establishment by ourselves.”

The club currently pays just $500 a year in rent to be housed in the country’s biggest transportation hub.

“I don’t understand why they can’t just leave us alone,” Mr. Bradbeer said. “We’re not harming anybody.”

The terminations of the gun clubs’ leases were part of a raft of recommendations put to the executive committee on measures that are within the purvey of the city’s powers when it comes to curbing guns.

Toronto council voted last month to call on the federal government to ban handguns nationwide and the idea was for Toronto to practice what it preaches. But even some of those councillors who supported the request for the handgun ban were uneasy with targeting law-abiding legal gun owners in the quest to reduce shooting deaths.

Councillor Norm Kelly (Scarborough Agincourt) suggested the amendment, saying that the city can’t in good conscience house shooting ranges any longer, but “I don’t want to see these people run over.”

Alok Mukherjee, the chairman of the Toronto Police Services Board, said he had difficulty reconciling his friendship with a target shooter and his position on the matter.

“We have to balance the interests of a few against the broader interest,” he said.

Full Story | See Also: Municipalities Join Miller in Calling for Final Citizen Disarmament | Pistol Pendant Causes Airport Holdup | Youth Worker Subjected to Warrantless Raid on Secret Evidence | Miller wants shooting ranges shut down

CBC News
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

The House of Commons has passed a motion to grant permanent residence status to American military deserters and their families, but it’s not expected to help a U.S. soldier recently ordered to leave Canada.

While all three opposition parties supported the non-binding NDP motion Tuesday, the government voted it down and is certain to ignore it.

There are an estimated 200 Iraq War resisters in Canada, including Corey Glass, 25, who learned last month that his application to remain in the country has been rejected. He is supposed to voluntarily return to the United States by June 12 or be deported.

Glass had been in Iraq for five months as a sergeant in military intelligence when he fled to Toronto in 2006 and applied for refugee status while on leave in Fairmount, Ind.

He said he filed on the grounds of objection to military service, convinced the war was “illegal and immoral.”

The former National Guard member said he tried to leave the army, but was told that desertion was punishable by death.

Lee Zaslofsky, co-ordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign and a Vietnam War resister, said Glass would face imprisonment if he returns to the U.S.

He claimed Glass would be the first Iraq War resister to be deported from Canada.

Full Story | See Also: U.S. soldier who fled to Canada ordered deported

Richard Brennan, Toronto Star
Jun 03, 2008 02:44 PM

OTTAWA — So many businesses are playing fast and loose with Canadians’ personal information that data breaches have become virtually “epidemic,” federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says.

Stoddart said in her annual report released today that over the past few years, hundred of thousands of Canadians have been affected by data breaches with financial institutions reporting the largest number of breaches to the privacy commission.

“Data breaches have been reported or noted for years but they are kind of growing into an … epidemic proportion not only in Canada but elsewhere,” the commissioner told the Toronto Star today.

Even so, businesses continue to download customers’ personal information, such as their date of birth and Social Insurance Number, onto laptops that are often stolen or lost.

“Too often, we see personal information compromised because a company has failed to implement elementary security measures such as using encryption on laptops, ” Stoddart said in her report.

According to the annual report, almost nine in 10 people whose data was compromised by a self-reported breach in 2007 were put at risk because their personal information was held in an electronic format that was either not secure or lacked adequate protection such as firewalls and encryption.

“Too often, large corporations underestimate the value of personal information and the risk that thieves will target it. As a result, we see deficient safeguards, lackadaisical privacy and security policies and procedures,” she stated.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) received 21 voluntary breach reports in the first five months of 2008 compared to 34 voluntary reports for all of last year, which was up from 20 in 2006.

Privacy officials are still reeling from the size and breadth of the security breach disclosed by the Framingham, Mass.-based retailer TJX Companies in December 2006, which compromised 94 million credit cards, including many held by Canadians.

“TJX was one of many companies gambling with Canadians’ personal information,” said Stoddart, who is pushing the federal government to call for mandatory reporting of security breaches that compromise an individual’s person data.

Within days of the TJX breach, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce announced that computer hard-drive loaded with the private information of nearly half a million customers went missing in December somewhere between Montreal and Toronto.

The bank confided that the information included names, addresses, signatures, birthdays, bank account numbers, beneficiary information and social insurance numbers of about 470,000 current and former clients of Talvest Mutual Funds, which is part of CIBC.

“Businesses recognize the value of personal information to themselves for targeted marketing campaigns … unfortunately this perception doesn’t always translate into security measures up to the job of protecting the information from criminals,” Stoddart said in her 75-page report.

Full Story

RHÉAL SÉGUIN AND KAREN HOWLETT, The Globe and Mail
June 2, 2008 at 6:40 PM EDT

QUEBEC — A cap-and-trade system aimed at fighting global warming could be up and running in Canada’s two largest provinces as early as January 2010 under an accord signed today by the Ontario and Quebec governments.

The agreement signed Monday commits both provinces to work with other jurisdictions to design a regional market that will set limits on greenhouse gas emissions and introduce a credit system whereby companies that exceed their limits would pay a fee to those that come under the cap – essentially trading cash for credits earned by their competitors.

The accord followed a historic joint cabinet meeting that sent the clearest signal yet the country’s two most populous provinces have forged a new central Canadian political alliance.

Premiers Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest suggested Monday that the federal government will have no choice but to follow their lead.

“Ottawa will have no choice,” Mr. Charest said. “The day the Americans elect a new government that puts into place a cap and trade system, Canada isn’t the one who is going to tell Europe, tell the United States that we have our system and you have yours. They [Ottawa] will be isolated.”

…

Coming out of yesterday’s joint meeting, many of the 30 cabinet ministers from the two provinces said that a new Ontario-Quebec alliance had emerged from the process. One Quebec cabinet minister noted that 60 per cent of the meeting was conducted in French and that they found common ground on many issues that related to the energy, the economy and the environment.

“Mark my word that what has taken place here today is not going to go unnoticed in Ottawa. It will become an important part of the next federal election campaign. As a region, central Canada cannot be ignored,” said Quebec deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau.

For Mr. McGuinty, the meeting was the beginning of a “shared destiny” in which the two provinces will respond united to the many common economic problems they share.

“We have a lot in common and it’s time for us to recognize that. And I’d like to see in the future that this was the beginning of a further strengthening of an old alliance which in fairness we had come to overlook.”

The two provinces also signed deals aimed at improving economic and social ties. They urged Ottawa to move forward in beginning talks on establishing a free trade agreement with Europe.

Quebec is also guaranteeing its neighbour a steady flow of hydroelectricity to replace Ontario’s coal generating plants, especially with the construction of a 1,200-megawatt interconnection power distribution line to Ontario.

…

Planning for the joint cabinet meeting began in November, when Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Charest met in Toronto, signalling the beginning of their warmer relations. Both premiers feel that Ottawa is not doing enough to help their ailing manufacturing economies. By presenting a united front on issues they have in common, they are sending a message to Ottawa that they are a formidable alliance. As Mr. Charest pointed out Monday, their combined economies are the fourth-largest in North America.

Their cap-and-trade system trumps the Harper government’s climate-change plan, one that has been criticized for not going far enough to combat global warming.

“We are very much open to expanding this and ideally, this would serve as the foundation for a national cap-and-trade program,” Mr. McGuinty said.

“This is hardly an exclusive club that we are putting together here. I know that in the past, representatives of B.C. and Manitoba have expressed some interest in this, and Jean and I would want to work hard together with our colleagues to lay down the foundation.”

Full Story | See Also: Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | Dion begins selling carbon plan | Time has come to put ‘price on waste and pollution’: Dion | Is it time for toll roads? | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change