statism watch

They should call it Police Party Cruise 2009, they could sell tickets and make up some of that $76 million spent. Luxury cruise ships? Why not just rent an aircraft carrier? They’ll need a secure platform for their borrowed drone patrols.

Allan Dowd, Phil Berlowitz, Reuters
April 21, 2009

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 21 (Reuters) – Canadian police have struck a C$76 million ($61 million) deal with two units of cruise line operator Carnival Corp (CCL.N) to house security personnel during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Carnival’s Holland America and Carnival Cruise Lines units will supply a total of three ships to serve as floating hotels in Vancouver harbor during the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, according to police officials.

Police decided to use cruise ships for temporary housing and food service because of a shortage of regular hotels during the Games, and say the docked vessels will also give them easy access to the venues needing protection.

Planners have said up to 7,000 police officers from across Canada may be brought to Vancouver as part of C$900 million security plan that will also include military personnel and 4,000 private security guards.

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It’s a politically useful myth to perpetuate – this is why this sort of pandering persists, and it will persist unless people stand up to the lies.

Flashback: 9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie About 9/11 | US Government Questioned on Forged Letter Linking Saddam to 9/11 | Director of 9/11 commission “secretly spoke with Rove, White House”

CBC News
April 21, 2009

Clarifies comments that implied 9/11 terrorists entered U.S. through Canada

A suggestion by the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary that terrorists have routinely entered the United States through Canada – including the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – caused a kerfuffle in Washington Tuesday.

Janet Napolitano made the comment in an interview Monday with CBC’s Washington correspondent, Neil Macdonald.

In the interview, Macdonald asked Napolitano to clarify comments she made last month that the Canadian and Mexican borders must be treated equally.

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How did this happen in Canada? Given the recent spate of incidents where various police services have been observed perjuring themselves and destroying evidence (the Robert Dziekanski trial also comes to mind), it’s clear that this is a frontal assault on Canadian liberty. When you factor in the fact that ‘anti-terror’ law in Canada has shot holes in the concept of personal intention by jettisoning the concept of mens rea, your assets may even be seized if someone in your social circle is found guilty of a crime on or around your property. This must be addressed immediately by any honest legal eagles as may still exist in Canadian jurisprudence.

Update (2009/04/23): Wait a minute! – is this why police stations are preparing to have on-staff prosecutors?

Flashback: Entrapment becoming standard procedure for police | Ottawa moves to toughen anti-gang laws | Schools seek more police as crime drops | Ontario to place prosecutors in police stations | Tory ‘Guilty before proven innocent’ law to make debut in court | Perjury: Is it different for cops? | Justice Critic Brands Street Racing Vehicle Seizure Law as “Police State-ism”

Mindelle Jacobs, Toronto Sun
April 21, 2009

There have been some terrible miscarriages of justice due to proceeds of crime legislation in other countries.

Whether Canada will do better remains to be seen.

To the surprise of at least one legal expert, the Supreme Court of Canada last week unanimously gave the provinces incredible powers to seize assets allegedly connected to crime.

For a country that has gained the reputation, whether deserved or not, of protecting the rights of the accused over the rights of victims, it’s quite an about-face.

As one worried reader e-mailed the other day: “This is a terrifying development. If the police even suspect you of a crime, they can take all your stuff. They don’t have to prove it.”

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Bill Curry, Globe and Mail
April 21, 2009

RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, left, arrives to a public safety committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday to appear as a witness on taser studies. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Sean Kilpatrick)

OTTAWA – Opposition MPs accused RCMP Commissioner William Elliott of watering down the police force’s restrictions on tasers, challenging the Commissioner to explain why a reference in the RCMP manual warning against repeated use of the stun gun was removed in the latest version of the policy.

Mr. Elliott said the new policy, which was completed in February and distributed to MPs this week, should be taken as a whole and he stressed that it does make the use of tasers more restrictive.

Liberal, Bloc Québécois and NDP MPs all asked Mr. Elliott to explain why a line in the previous policy informing officers not to use a taser repeatedly has been deleted.

Mr. Elliott said that if someone is in a life-or-death situation, he would not want a rule that would prevent an officer from defending him or herself. He also said new policies in place stress the need for officers to assess the risk of using a taser and supervisors are now obliged to take a closer look at each incident where a taser is used.

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Flashback: Son of ‘Patriot Act’ Author Denies Connection to Obama-NAFTA Leak | Signs point to PMO in NAFTA leak | PM’s aide fuelled uproar

Barrie McKenna, The Globe and Mail
April 21, 2009

WASHINGTON – A whispered assurance from a Barack Obama aide to Canadian diplomats that the future U.S. president would not rip up the North American free-trade agreement has proven prophetic.

Mr. Obama’s top trade official confirmed yesterday that Mr. Obama has no plans to reopen NAFTA to insert tough environmental and labour protections, which he publicly pledged to do during last year’s presidential race.

“The President has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement,” U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk told reporters.

Mr. Kirk made the comments after returning from the weekend Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, where Mr. Obama met privately with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

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Flashback: Entrapment becoming standard procedure for police | Ottawa moves to toughen anti-gang laws | Schools seek more police as crime drops | Tory ‘Guilty before proven innocent’ law to make debut in court | Justice Critic Brands Street Racing Vehicle Seizure Law as “Police State-ism”

Canadian Press
April 21, 2009

OTTAWA – New statistics suggest serious criminal offences were on the decline well before the federal Conservative government launched its anti-crime campaign in Parliament.

The figures, reported by Statistics Canada today, indicate police-reported crime was less serious overall in 2007, the year after the Tories took office, than it was a decade earlier. The agency says the crime rate had also dropped, but to a lesser degree.

The agency’s new police-reported Crime Severity Index tracks changes in the severity of reported crimes by assigning each offence a weight, with more serious crimes such as robberies and break-ins given higher rankings. Traditional statistics have looked at the numbers of crimes, rather than rating their seriousness.

The report says the index – billed as the first of its kind anywhere – suggests crime severity fell by about 20 per cent during the decade, driven by a 40 per cent drop in break-ins.

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