Northman's Fury

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney attempted to cover up cash payments of $300,000 he received from a secret account, Karlheinz Schreiber told CBC's The Fifth Estate.

That, unfortunately, isn't the cover-up I'm talking about. The $300,000 in cash Mulroney eventually admitted to receiving in hotel rooms, is linked to an investigation into the Airbus kickbacks scandal. At the time, the investigation into Mulroney's involvement didn't go anywhere and Mulroney sued the Canadian government for damaging his reputation and got a cool $2.1 million for his troubles.

So now that it is known that Mulroney actually did receive cash payments from Schreiber, just what is our intrepid RCMP doing about it?

Documents obtained by CBC News show that the Justice Department looked into whether or not it could attempt to recover the $2.1 million-settlement Mulroney received after revelations Mulroney had accepted cash payments from Schreiber.

But the RCMP shut down the investigation into Mulroney, even saying he'd never be charged again, without confirming whether or not Mulroney even got the money or what it might have been used for.

Shut the investigation down? The guy scammed the Canadian taxpayer out of an additional two million dollars based on his claim that he didn't receive any money from Schreiber, and after he is forced to admit that he did receive a quite nice sum from the man, in cash, the RCMP doesn't even think its worth looking in to. Whose right are these guys defending?

Canadian officials are taking the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect's family home, arguing national security necessitates the scrutiny.

. . .

Canadian officials accuse Mr. Jaballah of playing a "communications relay" role in a major terrorist massacre - al-Qaeda's 1998 African embassy bombings. His potential access to fax machines, computers and telephones inside his family home, where he lives with his wife and five children, deeply worries the government.

Mr. Jaballah, who was never charged with a criminal offence, spent nearly all of 1999 to 2007 in jail. Attempts to deport him to Egypt, a country known to torture fundamentalists, failed on humanitarian grounds.

Maybe it's just me, but I was under the, apparently mistaken, impression that I lived in a country where people actually had to be charged or convicted of a offence before we were allowed to throw them in jail for several years or turn the house where he lives, with his family, into a closed-circuit version of Big Brother.

Like four other alleged al-Qaeda-affiliated foreigners held under controversial "security certificate" powers, he has recently agreed to live under extraordinary surveillance, in return for being let out of jail.

Past measures have included the suspects submitting to being followed by federal agents during their few weekly excursions, having their calls monitored, staying away from computers and having video cameras installed - but outside the home. Never before has any Canadian prisoner on bail been known to have had to countenance cameras inside the household.

What's the saying about giving an authoritarian an inch? Allow your rights to be taken away, and they'll just keep taking them.

I just have to shake my head at this last line from an article in the Edmonton Sun by Mindy Jacobs complaining just how less effective our profiling measures are compared to the Israelis.

We've got the charter, fellow Canadians. But will it save us from terrorism?

Yes, let's just hand off all of our rights and freedoms to the government so they can promise to keep us safe from the big, bad terrorists.

Back in the day, those opposed to an autocratic government spouted famous lines like, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety", and, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Now, the line seems to be, "Do whatever you want! Just don't let those nasty furriners hurt me!"

A couple of months ago, I posted a link to story that said that thanks to the terms of the ironically-named, "Clean Air Act", it was illegal to sell most commercially available low- or zero-emission vehicles in the vast majority of the United States.

After a quick bit of research, I smugly noted that Canada, at least, wasn't doing anything quite that stupid.

Damn.

The founder of a Canadian-made, 100 per cent electric car says the federal government is blocking him from selling his cars in Canada.

The ZENN (zero emissions, no noise) electric car is already being sold in the United States, Mexico, and Europe, where it has won awards.

The two-seater is built in St. Jerome, Que., by Toronto-based ZENN Motor Company. It is roughly the same size as the Mini-Cooper, and would sell for approximately $14,000.

Company founder Ian Clifford says Canadians haven't heard much about the car because Ottawa won't let him sell it here.

And why isn't it allowed to be sold here?

When asked why the cars won't be licensed in Canada, Harry Baergen, a senior regulatory enforcement engineer with Transport Canada provided the following responses to CBC News:

CBC: "[Has the ZENN car] met the regulatory requirement?"
Baergen: "They haven't met our requirements yet, no."

So they haven't met the requirements?

Baergen: "They've showed us that it meets requirements as an LSV (low-speed vehicle)."
CBC: "They have shown that to you?"
Baergen: "Yes."

So they have met the requirements, we're just not ready for him sell it yet.

So we have an award-winning, home-grown, Canadian auto-maker selling vehicles around a good chunk of the globe; vehicles that could help reduce pollution, smog, and cut carbon emissions, and that have met the requirements needed, but our government doesn't want him selling the cars here in Canada.

I'm sad to say that somehow, this just doesn't surprise me.

Four months ago, Parliament passed amendments to the Canada Elections Act that requires each voter produce proof of identity and a residential address before being allowed to cast a ballot.

However, more than one million Canadians living in rural areas don't have an address that includes a street name and number.

. . .

In Nunavut, more than 80 per cent of registered voters don't have a residential address.

Probably because we elected a Liberal last time around.

All kidding aside, I'm curious if there are any other segments of society that the new Elections Act disenfranchises?

Another fine example of the Conservatives putting the love of party over the needs of Canadians.

The federal Conservative party has suspended the riding executive that backed ousted Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey.

. . .

Casey, the longtime MP for the region, was kicked out of the Conservative caucus in June for voting against his party's budget, which he said broke the promises laid out under a 2005 offshore oil and gas accord.

Foolish Mr. Casey for thinking the needs of constituents should trump his loyalty to The Party, or that The Party would honour its promise not to fire anyone who voted with their conscience rather than with The Party. That sort of foolishness is for people who believe in representative democracy. Granted that none of federal parties are very good with this concept, but the Conservatives always seem determined to go several steps beyond everyone else on these issues.

What comes out of their mouths sometimes is just creepy:

"It is unworkable when you have a board that is not committed to one thing and one thing only, and that is to electing a member of Parliament in the Conservative Party of Canada," he said.

I mean, could you at least pretend to give a shit about what the constituents might like?

It appears as though the federal Conservative Party has a very unique view of privacy rights and just who is deserving of it.

The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says a former Tory MP.

The issue spilled onto the floor of the House of Commons on Thursday when Garth Turner, the expelled Tory-turned-Liberal MP, accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of an "unethical invasion of Canadians' privacy.''

Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics -- but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area.

I think one can assume bringing their political party under the law so that their unethical behaviour can be punished won’t be one of the Conservatives’ priorities, ever.

The linked story gives a good summary of what it is the Conservatives are doing.

the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, datamining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

. . .

Logging constituent files in a central party database that may also be used as part of election planning, fundraising, advertising strategy and policy deliberation appears to be clearly offside, two nationally respected privacy experts told The Canadian Press.

"If somebody contacts their MP because they're having a problem with their CPP benefit or their military pension, they don't expect to end up on a mailing list for a political party,'' said David Fraser, a Halifax lawyer who specializes in privacy issues with the firm McInnes Cooper.

The Conservative Party is basically sucking up every piece of data they can get about you and putting it into a huge database to be used for whatever purpose they want to.  This is a huge violation of Canadians’ personal privacy.

While people pass around their personal information all the time these days without thinking much about it, abuses of that information must be guarded against, particularly when those abusing it are purporting to be our representatives and leaders.

Privacy laws, and the practices any ethical and professional people should follow with people’s personal information, are pretty straight forward in their rules, none of which the Conservatives seem to care much about.

The important point to remember, is that your personal information belongs to you; regardless who has it, who you give it to, or what purpose it is used for, information about you is, for lack of a better term, your property.

Generally, when any outside party collects information about you, it must be done with your consent.  Not only should you consent to the information they collect, but you must also consent to their use of the data and any possible furtherance of that data to other parties.

Anyone who’s bought something on-line or subscribed to a newsletter or some such will be familiar with the little check-boxes asking if you read and understand the privacy policy or if you want to be included on mailing lists and so forth.  The real bastards force you to agree to be on the lists as a requirement for subscription, but in all cases, they have to inform you of it and get your approval, even if most people don’t pay as close attention to that step as they probably should.

The Conservative Party of Canada has thrown all of that right out the window.  While you may give them some information to help you with a specific problem, they’re also ransacking other databases to compile as much information about you as they can, and they’re transmitting that information and using it for whatever the hell they want, heedless of the concerns or the consent of the people whose information they have.

Any private company or individual who did this would be in breach of the law and subject to severe penalties, but our governing party apparently feels this is acceptable behaviour for themselves.

Just to add to the fun, remember that this is the same Conservative party who has sent people to see their own party’s unelected representatives in ridings opposition parties won until they got caught at it.  Anyone want to bet that anyone who followed that advice will find that their personal information is part of the Conservative data mining programs?

And this just goes beyond the pale:

The Conservatives, who openly boasted about their state-of-the-art CIMS database after purchasing it in 2004, now refuse to discuss it.

"I will not talk about internal party databases,'' said party spokesman Ryan Sparrow. "I'm not disclosing what is in our database, who is in our database.''

When asked if Canadians can request to see their file on the CIMS database, Sparrow responded: "What would be their specific need to see?''

Asked a second time, Sparrow shut down the inquiry.

"I'm not going to help you with your story. It's internal party matters.''

“What would be their specific need to see?”  How about it’s our personal information that you bastards are compiling and using without our consent?  How about we are the owners of the data you seem to think is The Party’s just because you’ve compiled it by what would be illegal means for anyone else?

Apparently for the Conservatives, anything to do with The Party is private and should be protected; the personal information of Canadians is fair game to be exploited any which way they please.

Ever remember these guys saying stuff about transparency and accountability?

This casual disregard for the personal information of an unknown numbers of their own constituents; the complete dismissal of any privacy rights outside their own, says far more about the Conservatives suitability to govern than just about any other story I’ve seen so far.

Cross-posted to BlogsCanada: E-Group

While I think Stephane Dion was right when he said that Canadians aren't looking for an election right now, it seems pretty clear that Harper and the Conservatives are:

The Conservatives introduced their new tough-on-crime legislation in the House of Commons on Thursday, a move that is expected to put the Liberal party in a tight spot once again.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday he will not allow opposition parties to make any amendments to the bill, which he will declare a matter of confidence.

If the bill doesn't pass, Harper's minority government will fall and an election will be called.

. . .

Dion heads into the crime debate after making a difficult decision on Wednesday to allow the Conservative's throne speech, outlining government's mandate for the next session of Parliament, to pass.

Dion said he will introduce amendments to the throne speech and if those are rejected, he will ask his party to abstain from voting on the speech, leaving the Conservatives with enough votes to pass the motion in support of the speech on their own.

For the Conservatives, this is a good move. The Liberals are in disarray and Harper has managed not only to keep his MP's on fairly short leashes, but by shortening up the last parliamentary session, has avoided having to face questions about stories like this:

“The Conservatives laundered over $1.2-million in national advertising expenses through local campaigns, which is against the law. Even worse, they tried to pad bank accounts of 66 Conservative riding associations with over $780,000 with taxpayer-funded rebates, again against the law,” charged Liberal Whip Karen Redman during one particularly heated exchange in the House.

Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan defended the party's actions by saying other parties have engaged in similar practices – though Elections Canada says it has not seen this type of transaction before.

Liberals emerging from Question Period said their performance showed why it is in their interests not to bring down the government.

“I think we saw in Question Period today the kind of grilling that the Prime Minister and the government doesn't want,” Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison said.

If they can force an election before having to answer questions about Conservative corruption, they have a better chance of winning another mandate, possibly even a majority.

And, if the Liberals don't force an election while the Conservatives do their level best to pass legislation diametrically opposed to what the Liberals supposedly stand for, they get to paint the Liberals as a bunch of spineless cowards unfit to lead or govern.

Like it or not, Harper is a damned good political strategist.

Update: Just one thing, do you guys think you can raise the level of debate at least a little past a third-grade level? Dare you to pass, Dare you not to pass. This sort of language is getting very tiresome.

Admittedly, there aren't a great number of facts out about this case, but I'm betting that cell-phone footage will be quite illuminating.

An eyewitness with cellphone footage spoke out Monday night about what she allegedly saw at the Vancouver International Airport when a man was subdued with Tasers by RCMP and later died.

. . .

Sima Ashrafinia, who recorded the incident at the airport on her cellphone, told CBC News that RCMP officers stunned Dziekanski four times and handcuffed him after he fell on the floor.

"The third and fourth ones were at the same time," she alleges. "The officer at his right and the officer at his left, they Tasered him at the same time and he fell down on his right.

What really struck me about the story is that the police are alleging that the death was caused by, "excited delirium", also known as in-custody death syndrome, apparently because the only people who suffer death from it happen to do so while in police custody. Rather gets the old BS detector quivering.

One of its symptoms is described as an irregular or accelerated heartbeat, which, if true, makes one wonder why the police would think that subjecting someone whose heart is doing wild and crazy things to repeated electric shocks is a good practice.

At the very least, that makes it sound like a case of police negligence.