Bison back in Banff. Burgers, anyone?

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Tim Smith

It appears wild bison will roam in Banff once again, now that federal Environment Minister Peter Kent’s proposal that the four-legged bovines be reintroduced to Banff National Park has been accepted by federal officials. Bison are a popular tourist fixture of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, which may be one reason why our government is keen on bringing them back to their old stomping grounds in Banff: some say their presence will increase interest in the park. There is, however, a good reason why they were removed in the first place, and why their reintroduction isn’t as easy as it sounds.

In 1997, Banff’s captive herd never got a chance to “flourish” as intended because its paddock interfered severely with the migration patterns of other wildlife in the area. The bison were removed from the park as a result, then auctioned off. And back in the 1970s—it seems the bison have an extensive history of bad luck in the region—a group of 30 Jasper-based bison wandered out of the park and were killed (some presumably shot by hunters to be made into bison burgers). Hunting is a big concern for bison lovers, as the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed them as a “near-threatened” species, but hunting the animals is not entirely illegal in Alberta. According to Maurice Nadeau, former president of the Alberta Fish and Game Association, “Any hunting opportunity [in Alberta] would be welcome, particularly an animal with the size and stature of a bison.” So while it appears that Banff’s only prospect of a successful bison resurrection will be of the free-range variety (i.e. paddock-free), Alberta’s burger-hungry hunters may cause Peter Kent to reconsider his policy.

The Shafia honour killing trial—Chapter 2

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

CP

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE HONOUR KILLING TRIAL:
	On the ebook in the Maclean’s magazine iPad app – Get the full story, plus, a week-by-week account by award-winning reporter Michael Friscolanti, as well as documents, video and audio evidence from the Kingston courtroom, and the heartbreaking diary of Rona, Shafia’s first wife and one of his victims.
	Or download our 10-chapter series detailing how the case unfolded.

By Western standards, Mohammad Shafia is not an educated man; born in middle-class Kabul in the early 1950s, he didn’t reach the seventh grade. But as an entrepreneur, he was gifted and ambitious, a stingy deal-maker who turned a small electronics shop into a multi-million-dollar import-export operation. His specialties were Panasonic radios and Peacock brand thermoses, shipped in from Japan. “It was only me,” Shafia told the jury, the pride still evident in his raspy voice. “I had the monopoly on importing those.”

Like many in Afghanistan, Shafia’s first marriage was an arranged one. It was his mother who first spotted young Rona Amir, the pretty daughter of a retired army colonel. Three decades later, police on the other side of the world would find Rona’s diary, detailing the events that led to her wedding day—and the years of “torture” that followed.

“[Shafia’s mother] invited all of us to her house so that her son could have a good look at me,” she wrote in her native Dari. “After our visit her son announced his consent.” When one of Rona’s brothers asked if she “accepted” the union, her answer was eerily prescient: “Give me away in marriage if he is a good man; don’t if he is not.”

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The office prank as evidence of RCMP dysfunction

By Ken MacQueen - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

Dirty Bertie—yours for about $25, batteries not included—is about as rude as a plastic mechanical doll can get. “He’s disgusting, revolting and perverted!!!” promises the box. “See and hear him moan and groan until he reaches his final pant-shaking climax!” Bertie is so over the top, it gained something of a cult following after an appearance as a desktop novelty on the determinedly politically incorrect U.K. version of the TV show The Office. Now Bertie is gaining more infamy with news that two members of the RCMP explosives disposal unit in British Columbia are being sued for injuring a bomb-squad colleague with a booby-trapped Bertie.

On its surface this is a case of a prank gone awry, but the larger implications for an embattled national police force are no laughing matter, nor are the injuries suffered by bomb expert Cpl. Tyrone Hempston when, on Jan. 4, 2010, he turned on the doll only to have it blow up in his hands. The lingering damage, both mental and physical, to 44-year-old Hempston has impaired his ability to do his job, curtailed his chances for promotion and limited future career prospects outside the Mounties, according to his lawyer, Walter Kosteckyj. “You know, it’s harder to get a job when you’re damaged goods.” Kosteckyj, a former Mountie who represented the mother of Robert Dziekanski, who died at Vancouver International Airport after being tasered by Mounties in 2007, said Hempston is paying a heavy price for suing the force. “He feels some pressure both from the organization and the people involved over how this is going forward, but I think he felt that he had no other avenue to go down.”

The supposed prank raises a number of troubling issues: the cavalier handling of explosives by the elite 14-member disposal unit; the decision not to charge the perpetrators, although an independent police investigation recommended criminal charges; the fact that Hempston continues to work in a tense environment with colleagues he is suing in a bomb unit that demands teamwork.

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The Shafia honour killing trial–Chapter 1

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 7:17 PM - 0 Comments

CP

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE HONOUR KILLING TRIAL:
	On the ebook in the Maclean’s magazine iPad app – Get the full story, plus, a week-by-week account by award-winning reporter Michael Friscolanti, as well as documents, video and audio evidence from the Kingston courtroom, and the heartbreaking diary of Rona, Shafia’s first wife and one of his victims.
	Or download our 10-chapter series detailing how the case unfolded.

The police diver who swam to the bottom of the canal found Zainab Shafia in the front passenger seat, her face slumped forward, her fingernails painted a light shade of blue. She was 19 years old and had 10 cents in her pocket. Her black cardigan, drenched after hours underwater, was on backwards.

Sahar, her younger sister, was in the rear of the sunken Nissan Sentra, dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a sleeveless top. Her belly button was pierced (a stud with twin stones) and her nails were polished two different colours: purple on the fingers, black on the toes. As always, the stylish 17-year-old was within reach of her cellphone—about to become a crucial clue for investigators above.

Geeti’s lifeless body was floating over the driver’s seat, one arm wrapped around the headrest, the window beside her wide open. Like Sahar—the big sister she idolized—Geeti had a navel ring underneath her brown shirt. Detectives would later find a note she had scribbled to Sahar, full of hearts and red ink: “i WiSH 2 GOD DAT TiLL iM ALIVE I’LL NEVER SEE U SAD!” She was 13.

Rona Amir Mohammad was slouched in the middle back seat, her soaked black hair rubbing against Sahar’s. At 52, she was the eldest of the dead: the girls’ supposed “auntie,” but in fact their dad’s first wife in a secretly polygamous Afghan clan. The day she drowned, Rona put on a blue shirt, three pairs of earrings, and six gold bangles. She was not wearing a seatbelt. None of them were.

It was June 30, 2009, the morning before Canada Day. Det.-Const. Geoff Dempster was supposed to work the afternoon shift, two ’til midnight, but his cellphone rang a few hours early. A colleague in the major crimes unit briefed him about the car full of corpses at the Kingston Mills locks, and asked him to come in as soon as possible. A few minutes after he arrived at police headquarters, three people showed up at the front counter to file a missing persons report: Mohammad Shafia, the girls’ father, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, their mother, and Hamed Shafia, their 18-year-old brother.

Dempster, a veteran cop with short blond hair and a rookie’s face, spent most of that Tuesday shift interviewing mom, dad and son, assuming, at first, that they were grieving relatives devastated to learn that their loved ones were gone. Their initial stories, videotaped for accuracy, were essentially the same. Wealthy Muslim family. Recent immigrants to Canada. Road trip to Niagara Falls, the 10 vacationers split between the Sentra and a silver Lexus SUV. Shafia, Tooba and Hamed all told the detective that they had stopped at a Kingston, Ont., motel on the way home to Montreal, and that Zainab grabbed the car keys to retrieve some clothes. The next morning, the Nissan—and nearly half the family—were gone. “That’s it,” Shafia said. “I don’t know anything else.”

But that was hardly it, as the detective soon realized. The more questions Dempster asked, the stranger their story sounded. Why would these women, after a six-hour road trip from Niagara Falls, pile into the Nissan for a middle-of-the-night joyride? Why did an eyewitness tell on-scene investigators that he saw two cars at the water’s edge that night? And why did the Shafias show up at the station in a green minivan—not the silver Lexus they were driving during the vacation?

Hamed, not a tear in sight, told the detective that he didn’t actually sleep at the motel with the rest of his family. Instead, he climbed back behind the wheel of the Lexus at two o’clock in the morning and continued toward Montreal, more than 300 km away. “I forgot my laptop,” he explained. He was home for only a few minutes, he said, when his dad phoned to tell him the girls were missing.

“How come you came back in the Pontiac?” Dempster asked, referring to the minivan.

“No special reason,” Hamed answered, mumbling about how the Lexus “takes more gas and fuel and stuff like that.”

“The reason for coming back in the Pontiac and not the Lexus was because it’s better on gas?” Dempster pressed.

“Well, that’s one of the reasons.”

“What would be another reason?”

“Nothing, uh, big,” Hamed replied. “Nothing, ya know, that’s worth telling.”

What police discovered over the next three weeks would tell a story so chilling, so unthinkable to most Canadians, that the resulting trial captivated the country like few crimes ever have. Mother, father, and eldest son—motivated by an ancient, barbaric “honour” code—used their Lexus to smash that Nissan over the lip of the Rideau Canal, watching with perverted satisfaction as all four females vanished into the water. “I am happy and my conscience is clear,” Shafia proclaimed the night before his arrest, unaware that a police wiretap was recording his every word. “They haven’t done good and God punished them.”

Today, a different punishment looms: life behind bars. After four months, 58 witnesses, and too many lies to count, a jury found Shafia, Tooba and their beloved Hamed guilty of quadruple murder in the first degree. It took just 15 hours of deliberation for the jurors to reach their verdict.

The evidence, utterly heartbreaking, left no real doubt about the truth. Before they died, the Shafia sisters were caught in the ultimate culture clash, living in Canada but not allowed to be Canadian. They were expected to behave like good Muslim daughters, to wear the hijab and marry a fellow Afghan. And when they rebelled against their father’s “traditions” and “customs”—covertly at first, then for all the community to see—the shame became too much to bear. Only a mass execution (staged to look like a foolish wrong turn) could wash away the stain of their secret boyfriends and revealing clothes.

Rona, it turns out, was simply a convenient throw-in, the infertile first wife who died as she lived. An afterthought.

“They committed treason from beginning to end,” Shafia declared, during another one of his intercepted rants. “They betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything.”

His daughters died because they were defiant and beautiful and had dreams of their own. Because they were considered property, not people. But the two words at the heart of this sensational case—“honour killing”—do not tell the whole twisted tale. What happened on that pitch-black night is also a story about cries for help that were missed or ignored. About sibling rivalry and family snitches. About young love and old-fashioned police work.

And it’s a story about a custom-built courtroom, where father, mother—but not son—took the stand to proclaim their innocence.

Read the full ebook edition of the Shafia honour killing trial, available for purchase in the Maclean’s iPad app.
Or download the complete story as PDF.

Police blotter: landlord with a gun and milk-truck bandits

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: An apparently lovestruck Washington man snuck into Canada eight times over the past 12 years so that he could be with his Vancouver girlfriend. During his visits he also racked up a criminal record for break-ins and assaults. After being arrested once again last April, the man—who is addicted to crystal meth—will spend the next 11 months in prison. In Canada.

Alberta: A man carrying a knife and wearing a balaclava was fleeing the pharmacy he robbed in an Okotoks grocery store when he was “linebacker” tackled by a man shopping for milk and eggs. Several patrons dog-piled on top of the thief and held him down until police arrived. There were no injuries, except for those incurred by the robber’s street cred.

Saskatchewan: A dispute over the terms of a rental contract for a home in Swift Current turned dangerous when the 65-year-old landlord drew a gun on the 29-year-old woman renting the house. No shots were fired. The landlord was charged with breaking and entering, careless use of a firearm and unsafe storage of a firearm. The tenant is likely looking for new digs.

Ontario: A man in London faces theft charges after posing as a buyer of a diamond ring, then making off with the jewellery. The 23-year-old alleged thief responded to an online ad offering to sell the ring for $5,000, and asked the seller to meet him in a parking lot. When the two met, he then grabbed the ring and ran. He was later caught, but the ring is still missing.

Nova Scotia: Police in Cape Breton are investigating a bizarre bank theft that was carried out using a stolen dairy truck. Thieves made off with the milk truck from a local creamery. Then, at around 3 a.m. on Jan. 9, police believe the thieves hooked a long firehose or rope to the truck and wrenched a bank machine from the foyer of a Co-op store in Margaree Forks. No arrests have been made.

A house call for doctors

By Kristy Hutter - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

The wildfires that swept through Slave Lake, Alta., last May destroyed two-thirds of the town, but they also left another smouldering crisis: an acute shortage of doctors. Prior to the fires, the town of 7,000 had 13 doctors. After their homes were wiped out by flames, however, five physicians moved away, leaving the remaining eight doctors seriously overworked. Now, as the town attempts to recruit more physicians, it faces a daunting challenge—where to house them.

To that end, two local financial institutions have stepped in to help the small northern Alberta town in its mission. ATB Financial and Servus Credit Union, which both have branches in Slave Lake, purchased seven townhouses and offered them to the town, which plans to make them available to new doctors. Because of the shortage of homes, rental rates have soared, so doctors will be offered the homes at “pre-fire” rental rates. “Housing is very short right now,” says regional recovery communications coordinator Andrea McDonald. “It helps to say, ‘If you’re going to move to the region, we have somewhere for you to live.’ ”

Alberta Health Services, which initiated the recruiting program, aims to bring three new physicians to the town. “We’re aware that the physicians who are working in Slave Lake right now are working really hard, and we’d like to help them out by providing them with some colleagues,” says Alberta Health Services spokesman Kerry Williamson.

There are some hopeful signs that the plan is working. In mid-January, one doctor toured the town. Meanwhile, two others are planning visits to Slave Lake over the next few weeks.

In Gatineau, the squeaky wheel gets investigated

By Gabriela Perdomo - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

The city of Gatineau in Quebec laid out its “statement of values” for immigrants late last year and immediately set off a firestorm of criticism. Among Gatineau’s instructions to immigrants: avoid cooking “smelly foods,” maintain good “personal hygiene” and abstain from bribing. One of those incensed by the guide was Kamal Maghri, a 38-year-old Moroccan immigrant who moved to Canada 11 years ago. But when Maghri sent an email to the city to say he would like to file a complaint, what he got back surprised him. City officials accidentally copied him on an internal exchange that showed they’d dug extensively into his background, calling a local Islamic centre to ask about him and prying into his financial situation.

In the emails, one employee noted Maghri had come to Canada “just before the September 11 attacks” and that he was in debt. “I was shocked. This is racial profiling,” he says. Even more astonishing, he says he later learned that the city official who wrote the email was a “diversity coordinator.” “They [Gatineau City] have people working on diversity and integration of immigrants who don’t even believe in it,” he says. Only after Maghri went to the media did officials apologize to him.

In mid-December, Maghri was contacted by the Montreal-based Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations offering to help file a human rights complaint, which he did in mid-January. The complaint claims discrimination and racial profiling on the part of the city of Gatineau, both based on the values guide and on the email that Maghri read.

At least one expert believes Maghri has a strong case. Jeffrey Reitz, a professor with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and an immigration expert, says the guide “stereotypes immigrants in a negative way,” portraying them as “a threat” to our society.

Economic boom brings a labour shortage to Newfoundland

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Vale Archive

There may be no more surefire sign of an economic boom in Canada than a shortage of staff at the local Tim Hortons. It happened in northern Alberta when Fort McMurray exploded with oil sands-related activity. And now it’s happening in Deer Lake, in western Newfoundland. “We’re in the midst of a period of poor availability,” says local Tim Hortons’ owner Oral Clarke. He plans to bring in foreign workers from the Philippines to fill out his staff.

For a town of 5,000 that sits at a highway interchange near the entrance to Gros Morne National Park—never mind in a province with the highest unemployment rate in the country at 13.1 per cent—this may seem like a strange conundrum. But it’s indicative of a growing problem on the Rock. After decades of being Canada’s archetypal “have not” province, Newfoundland and Labrador is experiencing an unprecedented economic boom. And the record expansion brings an unfamiliar problem: an acute shortage of labour. “For years we’ve had people leaving the province because of too few jobs,” says Richard Alexander, executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Employers’ Council. “All of a sudden there’s been a switch and we’re entering an area where we have excess jobs and too few people to fill those jobs.”

More than $43 billion is pouring into major development projects across the province. Among the most prominent are the $8.3-billion Hebron offshore oil platform, the $3-billion Long Harbour nickel processing plant, and the $6.2-billion Muskrat Falls Lower Churchill hydroelectric project. The government surplus—once a rare figure on provincial balance sheets—climbed far beyond expectations to $755 million last year, thanks mostly to oil revenues, says Memorial University economist Wade Locke. In a report titled “ Outlook 2020,” the province estimated that 77,000 job vacancies will open up over the next eight years (with more projects announced since the report, that estimate is widely perceived to be conservative).

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The polygamy tax break

By Ken MacQueen - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Photography by Brian Howell

He quoted the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but in Judge Diane Campbell’s Vancouver courtroom over the next three weeks, polygamous leader Winston Blackmore is confronting another book of fire, brimstone and unyielding dictates: the Canadian Income Tax Act.

By his own admission, 55-year-old Blackmore, leader of a breakaway sect of fundamentalist Mormons living in Bountiful in southeastern B.C., has faced police investigations since 1990. But while he escaped convictions for the widespread practice of polygamy, and allegations of child exploitation of young brides, it’s Canada Revenue Agency tax auditors who have laid low the once all-powerful bishop of Bountiful.

At issue is whether the polygamous group of some 450 that Blackmore leads constitutes a “congregation” eligible for special tax status under the arcane “Communal Organizations” section of the tax act. The blunt assessment by Justice Department lawyer Lynn Burch is no. In opening comments in the federal Tax Court appeal, she called him merely the “patriarch of a large polygamous family.” What little legitimacy that he had as a bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints ended in 2002, when the community split in two and Blackmore was excommunicated from the controversial church. He represents, she said, “a splinter group of a splinter group.”

Auditors claim that Blackmore under-reported $1.5 million in personal income over five years starting in 2000, and that he washed personal and family expenses through a Bountiful-based business he controls, J.R. Blackmore and Sons. Throughout, Blackmore, who admitted in court to having 21 wives and to fathering 47 children during the five years under tax review, claimed annual income rarely exceeding $30,000 a year. She said by trying to win special tax status, Blackmore wanted to permanently shift his tax burden onto others in the group, many of whom work for the Blackmore company “for a pittance” in remote logging and wood-processing plants. If he sees himself as a shepherd, she told the court, “the role of a good shepherd is to shear the sheep, not skin it.”

To achieve special communal status as a congregation—as, for example, Hutterite communities have—Blackmore’s group must meet the criteria under Section 143 of the act. Members must live and work together, adhere to the principles of the religion, they can’t individually own property and their working lives must be devoted to the congregation. Blackmore, clutching his books of faith, testified he and his flock meet that test. He cited from the founding Covenants and Doctrines of the Latter-Day Saints, which says all members have “equal claims” to property, and that men’s talents must contribute to “the Lord’s storehouse to become the common property of the whole church.” At other times he quoted Scripture, and the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, who published the Book of Mormon in 1830. Blackmore said he remains faithful to Smith’s “founding principles,” including plural marriage, while mainstream Latter-Day Saints broke faith.

Blackmore takes a calculated risk by fighting the taxman. He is testifying under subpoena as a “compelled witness” in the likelihood that his testimony in this civil case won’t be admissible in any criminal trial. Just a week before this trial, the B.C. government appointed yet another special prosecutor to consider if such charges as sexual exploitation and trafficking of young brides to polygamous enclaves in the U.S. can be laid. Clearly, these are taxing times for Bountiful and its defrocked bishop.

Does Brian Topp have the chops to lead the NDP?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photography by Cole Garside

Seated on stage at the front of a packed high school theatre in Toronto this month, Brian Topp—a prominent contender in the race to be the next leader of the NDP—is told he has 60 seconds to introduce himself. Despite being some 400 km from Quebec, he opens in French, earning his first applause of the evening. Switching to English, he delivers a greeting-card sermon to the faithful. “This was Jack Layton’s town,” he says. “And he loved this town and we know why. It’s because it’s diverse and it’s cosmopolitan and it’s progressive, which is everything that Stephen Harper and his pet mayor don’t like about Toronto.” The swat at Rob Ford draws laughter and applause.

He enthuses then about everything New Democrats can do to build a “more equal” city and country, and finishes with a defiant slap at any suggestion the NDP must change fundamentally to succeed. “We don’t have to become Liberals to win,” he declares. The crowd bursts into applause for a third time.

But however meticulous the phrasing and however receptive the audience, he does not always wear a look of perfect relaxation and his voice does not quite boom. So if, two months from the leadership vote, there is little doubt that Brian Topp knows the right words, the only questions are whether he can look and sound the part.

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Is the Tingley family a criminal organization or is the definition flawed?

By Richard Warnica - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Adam Huras/Telegraph-Journal

Rodney Tingley, a white-haired 58-year-old grandfather who police said was the head of one of New Brunswick’s most notorious crime families, lay in bed the night officers came for him. His wife, Gayle, was next to him; their six-year-old grandson was in between. The police raid didn’t come as a surprise, exactly. Mounties had been investigating Tingley for more than 14 months. But the pure force of it shocked him. “I woke up and all I could hear was someone hollering, ‘Cops! Cops! Cops!’ ” Tingley says. “So I jumped up, looked out the hall, and all I seen was SWAT teams with machine guns and masks and all this stuff.”

Tingley didn’t know the half of it. More than 100 Mounties from three provinces were raiding Tingley homes that morning, Dec. 10, 2008. Nine Tingleys or close relatives were arrested, and eight of them were eventually brought up on 57 charges. (The ninth, Rodney Tingley’s 78-year-old mother-in-law, was released without charge.)

The raid was hailed at the time as a major crackdown on a significant organized crime group. It was the first time in New Brunswick’s history that criminal organization charges had been laid since the definition of the term was broadened by the federal government in 2002. The RCMP wasted no time painting the so-called “Salisbury Sopranos”—as the family was dubbed—as a dangerous posse of gunrunners and drug dealers.

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At the Shafia “honour killing” trial, the verdict is in: guilty

By Michael Friscolanti - Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 2:21 PM - 0 Comments

The night before he was arrested for drowning his beautiful Afghan daughters, Mohammad Shafia told his wife and son: “I am happy and my conscience is clear. They haven’t done good and God punished them.” Today, in a courtroom packed to capacity, all three “honour killers” received their punishment: life behind bars.

The guilty verdicts—to four counts each of first-degree murder—were the climax of a sensational trial that captivated the country like few crimes have. In the end, after months of testimony and 15 hours of deliberations, a jury agreed with the prosecution’s theory: that three immigrant sisters were executed by their own father, their own mother, and their own brother because they didn’t behave like good Muslim girls should. Their “treacherous” conduct—boyfriends, tight clothes, independent thoughts—had so shamed the family name that death became the only way to restore their tarnished honour.

What happened to Zainab, Sahar and Geeti was not a foolish wrong turn by an inexperienced driver. It was mass murder, planned and pre-meditated by the people who should have loved them most. Continue…

Curtains on Duceppe’s second act

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, January 27, 2012 at 7:10 AM - 0 Comments

Jacques Boissinot/CP

Righteous outrage always came naturally to Gilles Duceppe. It seemed to live just behind those icy blue eyes of his, to be summoned on command usually when the cameras were rolling. It was his shtick, part and parcel of a narrative crafted over 21 years in federal politics: sovereignists are the only beings morally capable of defending Quebec’s interests in that foreign land of Ottawa. “The smell of scandal is wafting from the office of the Prime Minister,” the former Bloc Québécois leader belted, eyes ablaze, in a typical stump speech last April. “The Bloc will force Stephen Harper to be accountable as it did with the Liberals and the sponsorship scandal. That we will do.”

Odd, then, to see Duceppe embroiled in a scandal of his own, one that has already sullied his formidable reputation and will in all likelihood spell the end of his political career. Certainly, for a man who prided himself on his hot-blooded honesty, it doesn’t look good: as La Presse reported, Duceppe’s party paid its director general Gilbert Gardner with parliamentary funds for upwards of seven years. This is an apparent violation of House rules, which state that such funds must be used for parliamentary, not partisan, ends. La Presse also reported that Duceppe’s office paid the spouse of his chief of staff and allowed her to use parliamentary resources as she produced a book commemorating the Bloc’s 20 years in Ottawa.

The news has already stymied his attempted usurping of the Parti Québécois leadership—a move that, had it been successful, would have ushered the 64-year-old into the second act of his political career.

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An allegation so unthinkable

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Vincenzo D'Alto

The Crown and the defence agree on at least one thing: as murder plots go, it was amateur hour.

The whole point (allegedly) was to cover up the mass “honour kill” by making it look like an incompetent wrong turn. Daughter takes car keys, daughter swerves off the road and into the Rideau Canal. But nothing about the “accident” scene looked accidental. Just to get to the water’s edge, the supposedly out-of-control Nissan had to jump a high curb, make a hard left around some rocks, then a quick right around a stone wall. As one investigator testified, “it would have to be driven there on purpose.”

Stupid plan. Simple conclusion. (Or, as another officer put it: “You guys aren’t hit men. You guys don’t know how to cover your tracks properly.”)

But what the jury in Kingston, Ont., must decide, as deliberations finally begin, is whether the absurdity of it all actually benefits the prosecution or the accused. In other words, was the alleged plot so boneheaded that it’s simply not believable? “If the plan was to make it look like an accident, why choose such a difficult place to get to?” asked Peter Kemp, one of the defence lawyers. “You’re trying to make it look like an accident, not make it look like someone knew exactly what they were doing.”

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Who’s suing whom

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Nova Scotia: An online auction site registered in Nova Scotia is facing a class action lawsuit in Oklahoma, the chief location of its operations. The site promises alarmingly low prices for retail items (like $25.50 for an iPad), but critics say it’s a scam. Each bid raises the item for sale by a penny, but costs the bidder 60 cents. The class action lawsuit claims this is unclear and, thus, deceptive.

Quebec: A male teacher in Saint-Hubert is suing two female colleagues who allegedly convinced students to wrongfully claim he had sexually harassed them. The adult education school launched a two-month investigation into the accusations, concluding that they were “either unfounded or grossly exaggerated.” The man claims the wrongful allegations caused anxiety, loss of sleep and damage to his personal relationships.

Ontario: A woman who lived as a nun for 14 years is suing her former monastery for wrongful dismissal, the infliction of mental damage and invasion of privacy. She is seeking damages and back pay, even though she took a vow of poverty in order to become a servant to God.

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Winnipeg’s North End recovers its unofficial slogan

By Kristy Hutter - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

For more than a decade, anyone cresting the bridge into Winnipeg’s North End was met with a 50-ft. sign atop the roof of a local business that read, “Welcome to the North End,” after which someone had spray-painted the words, “People over profit.” The act of vandalism became an unofficial slogan for the area. So when the latter half was removed recently, it sparked a backlash.

Leslie Nepon, the owner of Nepon Autobody, says her ex-husband painted the original words on the inclined roof of their business in 1990 and vandals added “People over profit” underneath it several years later. Nepon believes the addition was painted maliciously because it was used in a video that purposely mocked the crime-ridden neighbourhood. But she began getting positive feedback from customers, and eventually a community that has often experienced economic strain and gang violence adopted it as a symbol of hope. “We have a history of investment leaving our community, so we needed momentum and collaboration,” says Rob Neufeld, director of the North End Community Renewal Corporation. “The sign actually means we want to be a welcoming place for people and for profits.”

After the building was renovated in November, however, Nepon hired a local graffiti artist to put “Welcome to the North End” back up, but the rest didn’t make the cut. Soon after, complaints came in. Cracking under pressure, Nepon has hired the artist to restore the motto come spring, with a slight adjustment: “Nepon Autobody puts people over profit.” “It’s their building, they can do what they want,” says Neufeld. “Whether it was originally put there in slang or not, I always felt good coming over that bridge.”

The navy’s great barrier grief

By Kristy Hutter - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Andrew Vaughan/CP

A floating security fence built in 2007 to prevent terrorists from attacking warships in Halifax Harbour has fallen victim to a more modest assault: mussels. The defensive barrier, designed by Ohio-based Worthington Products, is meant to protect Canadian and visiting naval ships from foreign threats, such as small vessels carrying explosives. But now the fence has been temporarily dismantled after throngs of mussels and kelp latched onto the submerged part of the fence, weighing it down.

The need for harbour security became evident after al-Qaeda carried out a suicide attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, piloting a small boat filled with explosives into the ship’s side while it was docked at a refuelling station in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen American soldiers were killed and 40 were injured.

This isn’t the first time Mother Nature has wreaked havoc on the barrier, however. In 2008, just three months after the 1.6-km fence was installed by Dartmouth-based Waterworks Construction, it had to be removed and repaired when it was discovered that strong currents were causing the metal links that hold it together to fracture. Critics have slammed the design of the fence, saying it should have been engineered to withstand the rough waters of the harbour. Dennis Smith, CEO of New Jersey-based WhisprWave, a rival company that builds floating barriers, told the media the barrier was under-engineered. “That structure was not designed for rough water.”

But the Royal Canadian Navy, which is in charge of operating and maintaining the fence, insists the removal of sea growth is just part of routine upkeep. After the marine life is removed from the booms, they will be reinstalled, although the Department of National Defence was unable to confirm when that would be.

The Liberals await heaven’s command

By Peter C. Newman - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Blair Gable/Reuters

It was like spending a frigid weekend huddled around the world’s biggest samovar, with 3,200-plus joyful Liberals, not one of them fitting my expectation that they had shifted categories from walking wounded to being the walking dead. Their joy is that, whatever else they might do in a future that remains a distant and ill-defined option, at least they can pretend that dreams still count. That even if the Earth moved last May 2, and left the one-time power barons barren of power, they exist, awaiting heaven’s command.

Assembled, they project the distinct impression that while they are in third—which is like having a one-way ticket to purgatory—they should still be heard. No longer members of Canada’s natural governing party, they are losers searching for a mission. Slip-sliding away, like drunks convinced they are holding up the lampposts. The Grits have yet to earn another chance to head an effective opposition. Beyond that, they can’t count on Bob Rae being the dream candidate who could lead them back to the Treasury benches. He has enough political baggage to fill an airport carousel. For some inexplicable reason, he reminds me of Sir John A. Macdonald’s line, “I do not say that all Grits are horse thieves. But I feel quite sure that all horse thieves are Grits.”

Before they’re taken seriously again, the Grits must correct a potentially fatal absence. The Ottawa delegates scored high on youth (a third were under 25) and gender (half were women) but dismally failed the skin-colour test. Swaths of white stands out in our multi-hued society. Also, the delegates’ decision to legalize marijuana hands Stephen Harper the most effective of cheap shots: I can visualize future Tory ads entirely devoted to attacking the “Marijuana Party.” The up-and-coming generation may swallow that Kool-Aid but parents and grandparents vote, too.

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Canada’s crude awakening

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Darryl Dyck/CP

In hindsight, Stephen Harper’s new fight against the world’s oil sands detractors was a long time coming. Last November in Vancouver, the Prime Minister gave a local television interview in which he warned that “significant American interests” would be “trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project,” Enbridge’s proposed $3.5-billion double pipeline from near Edmonton to a new port at Kitimat, B.C.

“They’ll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to try to slow it down,” Harper told his hosts. “But, as I say, we’ll make sure that the best interests of Canada are protected.”

In early November, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was putting off final approval of TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline until after this November’s presidential election. Harper has long viewed Obama as an unsteady ally. Now he’d had enough. “I’m sorry, the damage has been done,” he told CTV before Christmas. “And we’re going to make sure we diversify our energy exports.”

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Crack in the Northern Gateway pipe dream

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Darryl Dyck/CP

The business case for Enbridge’s $5.5-billion, twinned Northern Gateway pipeline, which would send Canadian crude bound for Asia to the B.C. coast, seems sound: the project could inject $270 billion into Canada’s GDP while fetching $10 more per barrel than the oil gets when transported south, to the country’s current, lone oil customer. But politics, it became clear as an environmental review launched last week in Kitimat, B.C., may yet derail the pipeline dream—its importance to the country’s financial future notwithstanding.

Ottawa’s smoke-and-mirrors strategy of bashing the project’s foreign critics, which was timed to the hearing’s launch on B.C.’s soggy, northwest coast, allows Canadian politicians to avoid pointing fingers at what really stands in their way: British Columbia First Nations, empowered by a decade and a half of legal victories that have granted them a significant say over land in their traditional territories. The powerful Wet’suwet’en, who vigorously fought a land claim over 13 years, culminating in 1997’s landmark Delgamuukw ruling establishing the existence of Aboriginal title in B.C., are among dozens of bands that oppose the project, and call its proposed, 1,176-km route home. “It’s going to get ugly,” says Terry Teegee, vice-tribal chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council. “Battle lines have been drawn.”

Legally, experts say, B.C. bands have more clout than those outside the province, thanks partly to an accident of history. Few entered treaties with the Crown, unlike First Nations elsewhere in the country; and since they never signed away title, courts now require their input when resources are extracted from their traditional lands.

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Harper’s French disconnection

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:10 PM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Peter White is about as conservative (and Conservative) as they come. He worked at Brian Mulroney’s side throughout the former prime minister’s nine-year tenure. In 2001, he turned his frustration with Jean Chrétien’s seemingly perpetual hold on power into a book, Gritlock, perhaps best described as a blueprint of how to neuter the then-powerful Liberal brand. In his free time, the former Hollinger Inc. executive has relentlessly pushed the Conservative brand in his native Quebec, both as a riding president and party organizer. And he’s sick of trying.

In a scathing open letter addressed to Canadians in general and the Conservative party in particular, White roundly criticizes the Conservative Party of Canada for ignoring francophones in general and Quebec in particular. “Today the voice of Quebec is virtually absent in Ottawa’s halls of power, or if present, it is a voice grown mighty small, and mighty easy to ignore,” White writes in the letter dated Jan. 12. “Since the election of May 2, 2011, many Quebec observers have concluded that Mr. Harper has consciously decided to ignore Quebec, now that he has convincingly demonstrated that he can win a majority without it.”

For some Conservatives outside the province, Stephen Harper might be forgiven for shunning Quebec. The Prime Minister has never been particularly popular in the province; he won a majority in last spring’s election thanks largely to a marked increase in support in Ontario and sustained support in the western provinces. In Quebec, meanwhile, the party lost five incumbent MPs (equalling half of its provincial caucus) and nearly a quarter of its popular vote. It marked the first time since the Conscription Crisis of 1917 that a government formed a majority with so little support from Quebec.

But while the rebalancing of power in favour of the West may seem natural for the Toronto-born, Alberta-bred populist, White says Harper’s Quebec brush-off will lead to a “de-Canadianization of Quebec,” in which Quebecers see less and less of themselves in the federal government—and turn (or return) instead to the Bloc Québécois. “Any competent demagogue—and there are several—could easily fan the tinder into flames by decrying the many petty slights inflicted on Quebec’s honour and pride at the hands of Ottawa since Mr. Harper has been Prime Minister.”

The sentiment is privately shared by a number of Quebec Conservatives, many of whom wouldn’t speak on the record about the party’s Quebec malaise. Some spoke of the lack of support from the party during the election, which has carried over into Harper’s first majority mandate. “To be successful, you need Conservative politicians regularly meeting with party activists, and in Quebec that isn’t happening,” says Bernard Côté, who served as adviser to former Conservative public works minister Michael Fortier. “I don’t know who is talking to who. Is it a lack of experience or desire? I don’t know.”

Contrary to the cliché that Quebec is a bastion of squishy leftists, a large swath of the province’s political landscape is receptive to small-c conservative ideals. Brian Mulroney twice swept Quebec largely by harnessing the conservative sensibilities of the province’s hinterland. In her 2007 book French Kiss, political columnist Chantal Hébert details how Harper made inroads in the province during the 2006 election campaign by appealing to those same sensibilities, and with a few highly symbolic gestures: recognizing the Québécois as a nation within Canada, and by beginning his speeches by speaking in French (a practice the Prime Minister continues to this day). An internal Bloc Québécois document written following that election noted, with barely hidden panic, how Harper resonated with “traditional, careful, old-stock French who … don’t see themselves in multi-ethnic Montreal.”

Harper’s French kiss effectively ended in the 2008 election, however, after announcing his youth crime bill and a disastrous decision to cut $45 million in arts funding from the province. Some say Harper hasn’t yet recovered from the slight. “Since 2008, there’s been a feeling that because Quebec shunned the Conservative party, that the Conservative party was going to do the same,” Côté says.

One example: the Conservatives only held their Quebec campaign post-mortem four months after the election, and it was co-chaired by Conservative campaign strategist Jenni Byrne. “All I know is that she doesn’t speak French,” says Georgette St-Onge, the Conservative riding president in Joliette. (Asked for comment, a Conservative spokesperson said “we have a strong and committed team” in Quebec. Neither Conservative MP and Quebec lieutenant Christian Paradis or Quebec adviser André Bachand responded to interview requests.)

White says he has met “four or five times” with Harper over the last two years, including an extended meeting last April, and he usually prefaces his criticism of the Prime Minister with praise for the man who united Canada’s right. He says there are fairly simple solutions to Harper’s image problem in Quebec—“Get him on French television to talk only about hockey” is one of them—but “the fact that he doesn’t do any of this makes me come to the sad conclusion that he doesn’t give a damn,” White said in an interview with Maclean’s.

“His image here is the pits. I’ve had francophones say to me publicly that they think he’s got ears and a tail, and he eats babies. And these are conservatives. They can’t understand why Harper doesn’t fix his image. Everyone knows he doesn’t eat babies, but he does everything he can to make people think he does.”

It isn’t only national unity at stake, White says, noting how the NDP has usurped much of the province, and that the Liberal party is slowly rebuilding its brand here. “Re-securing Quebec would re-energize the Liberals’ Ontario base, and all of a sudden Mr. Harper’s studied (or otherwise) avoidance of Quebec will become a problem for him,” White writes in his letter. “In politics as in life, you deserve what you tolerate. And most Quebec Conservatives are fed up.”

*****

READ PETER WHITE’S OPEN LETTER:

Studies say: mind the gap and remember to stretch

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Think twice next time you’re looking for honesty via text message. A study by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that people are more likely to lie when texting than in face-to-face conversation. In a simulation featuring deceitful stockbrokers, they found people would more readily lie if they felt less directly scrutinized or visible.

Alberta: A study by the Canada West Foundation found that, while having four of the five highest income cities in the country, the gap between the rich and the poor is widest in Western Canada. It found that B.C. and Alberta have the most unequal after-tax incomes in the country, pointing to less effective wealth redistribution programs like government transfers and progressive taxation.

Ontario: Researchers at the University of Toronto are suggesting concussed athletes aren’t the only ones to experience foggy memories and slow reaction times; they found similar symptoms in athletes with muscle or tendon injuries. Their study points to emotional distress, frustration and depression as possible explanations.

Quebec: McGill University researchers have contributed to a study that might pave the way to deeper sleeping for people suffering from disorders like insomnia. After uncovering how melatonin—commonly referred to as “the sleep hormone”—reacts with two separate brain receptors that regulate sleep, they developed a drug that may be able to more effectively trigger deep sleep.

Nova Scotia: Conducting a study at Dalhousie University, researchers were able to predict people’s propensity to binge drink based on the boozing habits of their long-term partners. The study focused on non-married couples in their early 20s, solidifying what every university student already knows: binge drinking is a contagious social phenomenon.

A mother and son face the truth

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

CP

The jury has heard so many conflicting narratives, such wildly different versions of the “truth,” that the evidence sometimes resembles a real-life game of Clue. Shafia at the canal with the Lexus. Zainab at the motel with the car keys. Tooba in the Nissan with the four corpses-to-be (and a nasty fever that caused her to conveniently faint as soon as she heard the splash).

But this week—after three months in court, dozens of witnesses, and one epic round of cross-examination—two things became very apparent: the prosecution’s complete theory of the crime, as laid out in chilling detail by Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis; and the opposing storyline that defence lawyers seem to have settled on.

Hamed—and only Hamed—at the water’s edge with a rope. (To rescue the women, of course, not to kill them.)

When deliberations do begin, there’d better be lots of chart paper in the jury room.

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Wood Buffalo’s response to the 2011 National Crime Rankings

By Brendan Procé - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 3:38 PM - 0 Comments

According to our 2010 municipal census, there are 104,338 people living in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Taking into consideration our 2011 count of people living in project accommodations (work camps), our most up-to-date tally is 115,503.

Approximately 100 babies are born here every month, compared to about 250 in Edmonton, a city 10 times our size.

The point: Wood Buffalo is growing very, very rapidly. Continue…

Canada’s looming battle over labour

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Blinch/Reuters

The Occupy movement, globally ubiquitous and proudly obtrusive, is remembered as one of the top news stories of 2011. In reality, the effort by various species of crank to take over public parks probably wasn’t even the most important “people occupying stuff” news item of the year, at least in North America. That honour rightly belongs to the February swarming of the Wisconsin legislature by up to 100,000 protesters dedicated to stopping Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair bill.” The new Republican governor, hoping to balance the state budget without reversing tax cuts of the past decade, struck at the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers, taking away their right to negotiate benefits and capping pay increases at the inflation rate.

The result was a ferocious multi-theatre battle over the value of public sector unions. It raged all year from the steps of the Capitol building in Madison to the state Supreme Court, the schools and universities, and even Wisconsin’s prisons, where guards threatened a wildcat strike and Walker countered by contemplating the use of the National Guard for replacement manpower. In August the state set a record for the largest number of recall elections held simultaneously in the U.S., as six Republicans and three Democrats in the state Senate were caught in the crossfire. (All but two Republicans survived.)

One wonders why this sort of massive fundamental confrontation over public sector unions—a type of confrontation that is all but perpetual in the United Kingdom—has been absent from Canada. It is not as though Canadian governments have failed to present pretexts for warfare. For 30 years the federal government has intervened in labour disputes only occasionally, but in 2011 Labour Minister Lisa Raitt went on a tear, threatening Air Canada customer-service staff with back-to-work legislation in June, pushing a Canada Post lockout of CUPW workers to binding arbitration by statute, and pre-empting Air Canada-CUPE negotiations in October.

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