Canadian News

Latest in Bosma case

Today police announced a second arrest in the Tim Bosma case with details to be released later this afternoon.
Last night I spoke with former Toronto police investigator Ross McLean about the Bosma case.

Ross McLean provides an update on the Tim Bosma murder case.

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Can you help in Oklahoma?

The devastation in Oklahoma is hard to fathom. The pictures and the videos only  tell part of the story. The remainder is told in the human stories that you will see and hear over coming days.
Right now people need help and they need it fast to cover basic needs like food and water. Hours after the storm ripped through Moore, Oklahoma my friends at Mercury One, Glenn Beck and Joe Kerry, left Dallas with truckloads of basic goods. You can help them deliver more.
Mercury One will pass on 100% of all money raised to those in need, no administrative overhead. If you can give, this is the charity I recommend.
Here are a couple of pictures taken early this morning by Paige Perry with The Blaze.
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More from Paige and crew here.
There are many more stories to come. Please if you can give, give now.
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Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erik Gransberg searches for victims in an underground shelter in Moore, Oklahoma May 21, 2013. Reuters
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A man salvages items from his tornado devastated store on May 21, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. AFP

Footage shared by Oklahoma storm chasers.

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VIDEO: Great Canadian whisky with Davin De Kergommeaux

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U of T job applications, who do you sleep with?

Back when I started applying for jobs, sometime shortly after the medieval warm period, there were certain questions that employers could not ask applicants. Questions regarding your ethnic or religious background were forbidden, questions of race were out of the question, even marital status could be considered a no-no.
That’s all passe and now, thanks to years of affirmative action, we are no longer colour blind or looking past other issues, we ask about them up front in the name of diversity. But asking about your sexual preferences is new to me.
Andrew Lawton has an interesting story on the latest fad in HR queries – U of T wants to know who you prefer having sex with.

Beyond the usual “Members of Visible Minorities,” “Sex,” “Aboriginal Peoples” and “Persons with Disabilities,” was a field I had never seen on a job application before.
It asked, “Do you identify as a sexual minority (e.g. lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirited, queer or transgender)?”.

Read the whole thing and weep for the decline of Western civilization.

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COLUMN: Gunter – Qualified praise for Christy Clark’s win

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/32166329/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Clark’s victory good news, sort of

by Lorne Gunter
Good for B.C. Liberal leader and Premier Christy Clark on her surprising (and overwhelming) election victory. Despite every pollster and pundit (including me) predicting her political extinction, Clark won with personal energy and determination, coupled with an appeal to voters’ interest in economic growth.
(A little reminder here and there of how disastrous past NDP governments have been didn’t hurt, either.) Clark’s win is good news for B.C. and the country.
The former talk-show host was not a full-throated advocate of resource development in her province. Still, voters correctly judged that she was more pro-development — her policies were more likely to preserve existing jobs and create new ones — than her chief rival, NDP Leader Adrian Dix.
And a growing British Columbia economy is good for the country as a whole.
The western-most province is traditionally a “have” province and traditionally a net job creator. So, were it to slip back into have-not status, as it did under its last NDP premier, Glen Clark, it wouldn’t be contributing either to the national employment picture or to equalization payments.
Under an Adrian Dix government opposed to pipelines, energy extraction, mining and forestry, and in favour of rapid expansion of private-sector union membership, B.C. could easily have become a net consumer of Confederation’s benefits, rather than the net contributor the rest of the country needs it to be.
Clark is also less likely than Dix would have been to create a national unity crisis.
To be sure, Clark’s rhetoric was every bit as in-your-face to Alberta and the rest of the country as Dix’s. And it was Clark, not Dix, who went to Alberta last fall to meet Premier Alison Redford and spent most of her time mugging for the cameras about how B.C. would never roll over to Alberta’s desire for a pipeline across her province from the oilsands to the west coast port of Kitimat.
But, again, no one — not even Redford and her staff — really believes Clark is as anti-pipeline as her bombast. Her words, it is assumed, were for the consumption of B.C. voters in the run-up to this week’s election. They were largely a tactic that, now that the ballots have been counted, will give way to a more pragmatic, conciliatory approach.
Had Dix won, it seems he truly would have kiboshed Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline and the twinning of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.
Which means he would have put at jeopardy both the national economy and national unity.
Nearly a fifth of the economy of the country as a whole is dependent, directly or indirectly, on resource exports. Had Dix blocked Alberta bitumen from getting to Asian markets, he would have put at risk thousands of jobs across the country, not just in Alberta.
And had he sought to block Gateway, he would have tread on federal toes since the Constitution gives control of interprovincial trade and rights-of-way for rail and pipelines to Ottawa. He also would have set Alberta and the rest of the country against B.C. as surely as any Parti Quebecois government has stirred up anti-Quebec animus in the past
20 years.
None of that means Clark and her Liberals will be flawless.
Economic development and job creation numbers from the past four decades show B.C. Liberals have not been that much more pro-business than the NDP when they have been in power, with the exception of the awful (but thankfully brief) tenures of New Dem Premiers Dave Barrett and Glen Clark.
The rest of the country should exhale and wipe its brow in relief that Christy Clark won.
But the Liberal victory is not without reservations.

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VIDEO: New details in the Tim Bosma case

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COLUMN: Duhaime – Mulcair’s flip flops on energy

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/31532257/?size=400x400&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90NDP leader needs to flip-flop — again — or risk sinking in oilsands

by Eric Duhaime
NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair keeps sinking in quicksand on the oilsands issue.
Two months ago, the leader of the official opposition was accused of treason when he visited Washington, D.C., and publicly criticized the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline, a 1,800-km pipeline project that could ship 830,000 barrels a day of bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to Texan refineries.
While U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to decide the fate of the pipeline in the near future, Mulcair’s statement made him look like someone who wanted to interfere in the American decision-making process and a traitor who backstabbed his fellow countrymen.
That controversy did not seem to teach the NDP leader a lesson. He made another faux pas this week regarding another pipeline.
Mulcair came out against Enbridge’s 9B pipeline reversal, which currently carries crude oil from West Africa and the Middle East.
A surprising move, since less than a year ago, in a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, Mulcair said shipping Alberta’s oil to Quebec via an existing pipeline was a “pro-business, common sense solution.”
He could have added it’s also the patriotic and ethical thing to do. However, in Repentigny, Que., on Tuesday, Mulcair flip-flopped.
He is now against the idea of reversing Line 9B between North Westover, Ont., and Montreal, Que. Why? For environmental reasons.
“There is no system of environmental regulation in Canada, with Stephen Harper. So, people have to say ‘no’ to this (pipeline reversal) because you absolutely cannot trust them (the Conservatives) to produce a result that is safe for the environment,” Mulcair said. Partisan Mulcair does not trust Canada’s environmental regulation system anymore since we have a Conservative government. That is the latest excuse used by Mulcair to try to take the NDP out of the muck.
We are not talking about building a new pipeline in this specific case, just reversing the flow. How could it provoke more spills and environmental catastrophes when it goes from west to east than east to west?
Even the Quebec separatists have not tried to use such an argument.
Isn’t it safer to carry oil in an existing pipeline than by boat on the St. Lawrence River as we currently do?
By trying to please his environmental fanatics on the left, Mulcair is thrashing about, up to his neck in sand.
Now that the NDP has
57 of the 75 seats in Quebec, he might have a hard time convincing Quebec motorists they better buy more expensive petroleum from a dictatorship in the Middle East than cheaper fuel from fellow Canadians.
It could also become difficult for the leftist leader to tell unionized workers at the refineries in the east end of Montreal that he refuses to protect and expand their industry. There now is no easy way out out of the quicksand in which the environmentalists have lured Mulcair, other than a step backward.
The NDP leader had better flip-flop one more time before he sinks for good in his own mud.

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Debate over negative advertising is over

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/33400900/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90The debate over whether to use negative advertising in election campaigns is over, it died with Adrian Dix’s hope of becoming premier of British Columbia last night.
Dix should have won the BC election and with a properly run campaign he would have. Instead he brought a knife to a gun fight.
I will give great big kudos to Christy Clark and her campaign team for their victory. They worked hard, the hit Dix hard, they delivered their message to BC voters and they won. But if Dix had not decided to “take the high road” and avoid attack ads, then no amount of hard work from the BC Liberals would have changed the result.
From day one of the campaign the NDP should have been running ads with one simple message, the BC Liberals lied last election on the HST question, can you trust them again. The answer for most voters would have been no. Reminding voters that the governing party broke a big promise last time around is not hitting below the belt.
Then Premier Gordon Campbell ran a campaign promising not to harmonize the provincial sales tax with the GST. He quickly broke that promise and was run out of office. There was a referendum on dumping the HST and those who wanted the tax dumped won.
If Dix had hammered that message home day in and day out, he’d likely be premier.
Thankfully, he didn’t.

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The March for Life in photos

My Sun Media colleague Andre Fortin snapped some great pictures of the March for Life. I think they tell a story on their own.
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COLUMN: Lilley – To serve and restrict

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/31848149/?size=400x400&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Beware of police diversity units that threaten rabbis

by Brian Lilley
In Canada you have free speech — at least until the authorities say you don’t — and this week one such authority used his power to trample all over that fundamental freedom.
A talk at a synagogue just north of Toronto had to be moved after a member of the “diversity unit” of the York Regional Police Force essentially threatened the rabbi in charge. The synagogue had been rented by a group called the Jewish Defence League so they could host free-speech advocate and anti-jihadist Pamela Geller.
Insp. Ricky Veerappan, one of York Region’s finest, decided he didn’t like what Geller might say so he paid a visit to Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo synagogue.
Kaplan is one of the chaplains of the York Regional Police, and Veerappan made it clear that if Geller appeared at the synagogue then Kaplan would lose his position.
Rabbi Kaplan’s response should have been to show Veerappan the door and remind the inspector that we live in a free country and until someone breaks the law they are innocent.
Unfortunately, he did not. He understood the implied threat and told the event organizers that the booking was cancelled.
“Some of the stuff that
Ms. Geller speaks about runs contrary to the values of York Regional Police and the work we do in engaging our communities,” Veerappan told QMI Agency.
Quite frankly inspector, you offend me but you are still in your job.
Police are supposed to enforce laws, not enforce unwritten and vague “values” of the community.
Veerappan told QMI Agency some members of the Muslim community complained to him that Geller would be speaking and he stepped in.
What Veerappan has done is assume Geller will commit a crime and acted to make sure she could not do that.
It’s not like she was planning a terrorist attack that had to be stopped, she was simply going to speak about radical Islam and jihad.
Fortunately for free speech, the organizers have found a new venue, the Toronto Zionist Centre — the talk will go on albeit outside of the jurisdiction of York Region’s values enforcers.
That a police officer threatened a rabbi if he did not cancel an event with a speaker the cop did not like should outrage everyone.
Yet outside of several blogs and some limited media coverage, such as QMI Agency and Sun News Network, the media is silent.
My friend Salim Mansur wrote to York Region Police Chief Eric Jolliffe to demand better.
Mansur started off by telling the chief that he was a Muslim and a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario.
“I am appalled that in this day and age we continue to hear regularly how the liberal democratic tradition of Canada and the West is being systematically shredded by institutions sworn to protect it,” Mansur wrote.
And he’s right.
It’s shocking that Prof. Mansur needs to school a police chief in Canada about freedom of speech, but clearly it needs to be done.
From the recent Whatcott decision at the Supreme Court (it said even speech that is true can be hate speech) to vexatious complaints about values, free speech is under attack in Canada. If we don’t stand up and defend it, we’re going to lose it.

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COLUMN: Blizzard – Wynne’s make believe budget

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/31518978/?size=400x400&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Ontario’s finances in a mess thanks to Liberals’ make-believe budgets

by Christina Blizzard
Cost of cancelling two gas-fired power plants?
$585 million.
Cost of sucking up to the NDP?
Billions.
Price of keeping this arrogant, incompetent, deceitful, wasteful Liberal government in power?
Endless — and pointless.
Trouble is MasterCard expects you to pay your bills.
Being a Liberal means never saying you’re sorry — and never paying your debts.
These Liberals just keep racking up more debt and driving this province into an abyss that will make Greece look like a well-managed paradise.
Make no mistake. Thursday’s budget wasn’t about fiscal responsibility or a prosperous Ontario.
It was about keeping a shamelessly inept government in power.
Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s first budget was a total capitulation to outrageous NDP demands to meddle dangerously in the auto insurance industry — by forcing private companies to reduce premiums 15%.
Liberals also pledged to hike welfare rates and to throw more money at home care.
All laudable — but we can’t afford them.
Well, we could afford them, but this dreadful government has poured so much cash down the drain, we’re actually celebrating a $10 billion deficit. Oops make that $9.8 billion — down from the $14.8 billion they’d predicted.
In what world is that a good thing?
Read the fine details.
We’re drowning debt.
As of March 31, the province’s total debt was a staggering $281 billion. That’s up an equally staggering $24 billion from last year. That was a $3 billion increase over the projection. And they used that money to finance the debt servicing. More sleight of hand. More Liberal subterfuge.
And next year’s deficit projection is more than this year’s — $11.7 billion.
Their figures are based on impossible projections. But these duplicitous Liberals smile and tell us they’re producing a budget for a “fair and prosperous” Ontario?
Give me a break.
I don’t blame Sousa. I don’t even blame Premier Kathleen Wynne. Let’s point the finger directly at the two real culprits — former premier Dalton McGuinty and former finance minister Dwight Duncan.
Except they’re missing in action. Duncan has departed Queen’s Park permanently and McGuinty is as rare a bird at Queen’s Park as the dodo.
The damage they did to the economy of this once-great province will live in infamy.
Your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s grandchildren will still be paying for their massive incompetence.
If the cost to service the debt were a ministry, it’d be the third largest — after health and education. You might just as well flush that cash down the toilet.
Their projections are ludicrously out of sync with reality.
The government says the public sector wage freeze stays until they balance the books — four years from now.
After the way they caved to teachers over their 0% and 0% pay freeze, what are the chances this government will stare down public sector unions again? About 0 and 0, I’d say.
They say they’ll hold growth in health spending to 2% — at a time when an ageing population is putting increased pressures on an already stretched system.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said holding the line and balancing the books will mean tough choices.
“We do need to reduce the number of positions on the government payroll,” he told reporters.
New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath wouldn’t say whether she’d vote against the budget. She said earlier that if the Liberals didn’t include a hard 15% reduction in car insurance premiums, she’d pull the plug and we’d be going to the polls.
“We are going to be going to Ontarians,” Horwath said. “I think it’s achievable.”
Look, after this week’s revelations about how much it cost to scrap the gas plants and how it was done, this budget isn’t about welfare rates, or home care — or even about auto insurance.
It’s about trust and integrity. How much longer can we afford this untrustworthy Liberal government?
This budget is make-believe.
If Stephen King had written it, it couldn’t be better fiction — or more horrifying.

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It’s not about guns, it’s about control

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/33369843/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Gun control is one of the top political issues in the United States right now. President Obama has invested heavily in getting gun control legislation passed. So far he’s failed.
There are plenty of arguments out there for gun control but are they legit?
In his new book Control, Glenn Beck says the answer is no.
Backed up by real facts and figures Beck takes on the gun control crowd to show what this push is really all about – control, not guns.
Catch Glenn on Byline tonight. Buy his book at the link below.

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Oliver Comes Out On Top in Clash With Fames Climate Catastrophist

Oliver comes out on top in clash with famed climate catastrophist

It takes a rare politician to stand up and take shots at a climate scientist who’s the darling of the global warmist movement. Even more uncommon is to see a politician take on such a climate scientist—and win the contest.

And so unfolded events last week when Joe Oliver, Canada’s natural resources minister, flew into Washington to build support for the Keystone XL pipeline. Before speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Oliver pointedly took aim at James Hansen, the former NASA scientist and one of the godfathers of climate catastrophism. Instead of a gooey marshmallow capitulation on the issue of climate change, Mr. Oliver questioned Mr. Hansen’s tendency to make claims that are at least exaggerations and often outright beyond-the-fringe.

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Agency withdraws casting call for CBC show that specified ‘any race except Caucasian’

The job posting on the casting website asked for someone of "any race except Caucasian" before it was changed.
A casting call to hire a new CBC host that specifically said white people need not apply has been withdrawn, with the casting agent offering apologies for the mistake.
The original ad for the host of a children’s show, posted on the casting agency’s website under a CBC logo and on Craigslist, said: “Please only submit [an audition tape] if you match the following criteria: Male between the ages of 23-35 years; Any race except Caucasian.”

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Will they show up at the March for Life?

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Julian Hanlon, education director of the Ottawa Catholic School Board at the Ottawa/Gatineau We Day.
I’ve spoken often about the political indoctrination that happens in our schools. See here, here and here are just a few examples.
Well today in Ottawa thousands of kids took part in We Day, an initiative that while not exactly partisan does lean on the progressive side. Few would deny that.
It is also put on by a group that supports Planned Parenthood and Stephen Lewis’ group, which like Planned Parenthood supports abortion. Why does this matter?
According to the Ottawa Catholic School Board they sent 700 students to the event. They could make an argument that this is not an exclusively abortion related event. Fair enough.
But here is my question. Will they send 700 students to the March for Life on May 9th?
I doubt it.
Some students do show up but the March for Life does not receive anywhere near the level of support that We Day does, nor does it get the official endorsement of the Ottawa Catholic School Board. In fact it was only a few years ago that they had a ban on schools organizing trips to the march. The board said it was too much of a political event. Only the intervention of Archbishop Prendergast changed their collectivist mind.
There is no doubt that We Day is a political event. Abortion support aside, there could be an argument for some aspects of what they talk about being in line with Catholic values. So why the double standard?
Will I see Education Director Julian Hanlon and other top administrators leading 700 students with the same gusto onto Parliament Hill in two weeks?
We Day describes itself as “a movement of young people leading local and global change.” Calling for our culture to respect life would fit that description.
So how about it Mr. Hanlon?

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Omar Khadr wants to have his conviction and confession thrown out

We learn from The Globe and Mail that Omar Khadr is appealing his conviction at Guantanamo and US taxpayers are footing the bill in an attempt to set him free.

They’re confident the military tribunal convictions will be overturned. “In our view there are serious questions about the validity of all these convictions,” Mr. Morison said, adding: “As the law now stands, I don’t see how his convictions can be affirmed.”

The argument is that the charges Khadr confessed to were not crimes when committed and may not be crimes now and therefore must be thrown out. This has already happened in the cases of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, both men with key al-Qaida ties.
Both men have had their convictions overturned over the last six months but are currently under counter appeal.
This news is of great comfort to the Khadr cheerleaders who claim Canada’s most infamous terrorist never should have been convicted.
I’ll keep an eye on the proceedings over the next while but I’ll give you this to ponder. Khadr’s confession, his plea deal and comments by his lawyer that he did not signed either document under duress.
Omar Khadr confession by brian_jameslilley
Omar Khadr plea deal by brian_jameslilley

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COLUMN: Lilley – They shouldn’t have been in Canada!

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/32671773/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Terror plot suspects shouldn’t have been in Canada in the first place

by Brian Lilley
So one of the suspects arrested Monday in the alleged terror plot should have been kicked out of Canada 15 years ago and the other one never should have been allowed in. Yet somehow it happened.
Feel safe Canada?
Raed Jaser is the Toronto half of our alleged terror plot duo who was denied refugee status and ordered deported in 1998. He never left. Instead, he boosted his criminal record to include threatening death and bodily harm. That was on top of his convictions for fraud and failing to comply with probation conditions.
It appears that for all of this Jaser received a total of about three days in jail and assorted fines and community services.
You would have thought that in 2000, while facing the charges for threatening death, someone might have suggested that the poor fella just be sent packing given the outstanding deportation order against him. You’d be wrong, though.
Instead, Jaser wasn’t picked up for deportation until 2004 and even then we couldn’t get rid of him.
Why? He’s a stateless person, so the United Nations says we have to keep him.
Even if Jaser is convicted and serves his sentence, under current Canadian law and United Nations convention we cannot get rid of him. Jaser was born in the United Arab Emirates to Palestinian parents but has told the court he has no rights of citizenship in the place of his birth.
Jaser has been a problem for Canada since shortly after landing here, but it appears he will remain our problem despite any attempts to deport him.
Meanwhile, the other half of the dynamic duo likely never should have been let into Canada.
According to the reports, Chiheb Esseghaier met with an al-Qaida operative before coming to Canada to study at the University of Sherbrooke in 2008.
This meeting put him on the radar of Canadian security officials.
If these reports are accurate, I have one question: Why was Esseghaier allowed into Canada if we had information on him associating with al-Qaida?
It’s not like we had to let him in, he wanted to come here to study on a student visa. We could have said no, we could have told him we were all full up, that we were washing our hair that day – anything but yes.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told reporters on Thursday that anyone applying for a visa from a high-risk country, like Esseghaier’s home country of Tunisia, let’s say, would be subject to a check by border officials and perhaps CSIS and the RCMP.
If we actually had information of Esseghaier meeting with al-Qaida operatives, then why was he allowed in the country?
Were immigration officials told? Did they allow him in despite the meeting with al-Qaida?
These are questions that need to be answered. At this point, it looks like we have forgotten one of the key lessons of 9/11 – government agencies need to speak to one another, they need to share information.
The police say they busted this al-Qaida-supported terror plot before it could be put into action, but by the sounds of it the accused never should have been able to plot, as it’s alleged, on Canadian soil in the first place.
And while the cops got this plot, what if they had missed, as they did in Boston?
We would be looking at these security lapses in a whole new light, one that includes hundreds of dead and trains floating in the Niagara Gorge.

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VIDEO: Lila Rose on the Gosnell trial

Do you LIKE a strong pro-life voice on TV? LIKE Brian Lilley on Facebook.
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COLUMN: Kent – Wisdom of ordinary men

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/32176743/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Ordinary people more than social media help stop terrorists

by Simon Kent
Some things never change.
In his 1937 book, The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell lauded “the ordinary decent person” as critical to the functioning of civil society.
Today, that observation remains the same.
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and then the foiled attack on a VIA passenger train, it was ordinary decent people who ultimately stood between alleged terrorists and deadly intent.
Despite its self-serving hype and constant desire to be applauded, at best social media provided background noise in Boston. At worst, its mass collaboration was a hindrance when it came to the investigations proper.
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Foursquare were all missing in action at the moment of ultimate take down. Instagram and Snapchat were on a break while Reddit just covered itself in ignominy.
Look at the evidence.
A curious homeowner and nobody else found fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Watertown resident David Henneberry had been walking his dog in his yard when he found blood under the “flapping” tarp of his boat, Slipaway II, and called the police.
That was that.
In Toronto and Montreal, the RCMP foiled what could have been an al-Qaida terror attack because of a similar public tip-off.
It came from ordinary, decent members of Toronto’s Muslim community. They alerted authorities more than a year ago about a person they regarded as a possible extremist.
RCMP Supt. Doug Best confirmed as much.
“Obviously, there was some community involvement to get as far as we’ve gotten,” he said in masterful understatement. “The community has been supportive.”
Compare that to the Boston Marathon bombing and the unsupportive hysteria that typified so much of what passes for real-time social media and its “word-of-mouth infrastructure.”
Bloggers, podcasters and unmoderated online commentators went to their followers convinced that they could crowdsource their way to identifying the Boston bombers.
As if an online hangout would bring the perps to justice.
It didn’t work out that way for the cut lunch commandos of cyberspace.
So many wrong conclusions were hastily drawn that anyone relying on social media for insight was bound to be disappointed.
Witness the grovelling apology made by Reddit general manager Erik Martin for the site’s role in fuelling an “online witch hunt” for Sunil Tripathi. Remember him? Tripathi was a missing Brown University student falsely identified as a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
“The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened,” Martin said. “We have apologized privately to the family of missing college student Sunil Tripathi, as have various users and moderators. We want to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure.”
That pain came about because prior to the FBI naming brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the primary suspects, members of the link-sharing site set out to crowdsource the identities of the alleged bombers.
By pooling all available images of the blast and its aftermath, users on the subReddit “FindBostonBombers” attempted to list and locate various “suspicious” persons for authorities.
Vigilantism went sour when Tripathi’s name was heard on police scanners and quickly repeated.
The site helped spread the misinformation and became “one of the more ugly and disgusting places that had a lot of traffic,” Tripathi’s sister told ABC News.
Two other men identified on Reddit found their faces on the cover of the New York Post, where it was strongly implied they were the subject of police inquiry.
Which only confirms the maxim that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has got its pants on.
Best leave it to the ordinary decent person to do the right thing in the end.

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COLUMN: Furey – What is “moderate” Islam?

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/31862938/?size=400x400&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Trying to understand ‘moderate’ Islam

by Anthony Furey
It’s time we discussed what exactly we mean when we talk about moderate Muslims. Because some people’s use of the term seems to be very different than my own.
My idea of a moderate Muslim — or any other moderate religious adherent — is someone who practises religion in the private sphere and understands the rule of law trumps any religious edict.
But some of the Muslim leaders the media have taken to labelling “moderate” don’t always fit this description.
On Wednesday, Chiheb Esseghaier, the co-accused in the train bombing plot, explained to a judge he doesn’t acknowledge the authority of Canadian courts because they don’t follow Islamic law.
“(T)his Criminal Code is not holy book, it’s just written by set of creations and the creations they’re not perfect because only the Creator is perfect so if we are basing judgment … we cannot rely on the conclusions taken out from these judgments.”
While this is an extreme statement, it’s not that far removed from those made by Syed Mumtaz Ali. He’s the now-deceased former president of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, who led the charge to implement shariah in Ontario in 2005. Months after then-premier Dalton McGuinty wisely rejected the proposal, Ali spoke to students participating in a model parliament at the prestigious Upper Canada College:
“In short, not being able to live by Muslim law means one cannot exercise freedom of religion guaranteed under the Charter. This is so because in effect Canadian courts are forcing Muslims to act in a way contrary to their beliefs or their conscious.”
He bizarrely adds, “To be equal does not mean that one identical law has to be applied to every diverse community of people.”
He concludes by acknowledging that if both parties consent to shariah arbitration, Ontario law doesn’t even need to approve it (this is true). So it seems he wanted the government to enforce shariah on unwilling parties.
This is what many so-called-moderates rallied around. Globe and Mail columnist Sheema Khan labelled opposition to shariah “fear-mongering.” She reopened the issue in 2009, stating the majority of Muslims in Canada are pro-shariah. Khan is also former chair of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN). Riad Saloojee, a later executive director of the group, wrote a column in the Calgary Herald in 2004, claiming opposition to shariah is caused by “general ignorance of Islamic law.”
I’d argue it’s the opposite: Any support of shariah is based on a general ignorance of western democracy.
I tell you all this because CAIR-CAN held a widely discussed press conference on Tuesday denouncing the Via terror plot and applauding police action. Now I’m not at all suggesting we should doubt the sincerity of these comments. Rather, just that we shouldn’t necessarily paint them with the warm and broad brush of “moderate” when their previous leadership defended Mumtaz Ali’s immoderate notion of shariah.
There are many not-so-moderates out there completely opposed to terrorism.
But that doesn’t mean they’re shining examples of liberal democracy at its finest. They may show their disdain in other ways — the support of shariah being one of them.
Painting these characters as moderate does a disservice to the real moderate Muslims out there. Some are quietly living their lives, going to work by day, practising their faith by night.
Then there are those who’ve received death threats for taking a stand against shariah and other inequalities in Muslim circles. Don’t undermine the moral strength of these exemplary citizens by lumping them in with the shariah crowd.

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COLUMN: Fatah – It’s the doctrine of jihad, stupid

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/32121420/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90“Root causes” found in jihadi doctrine

by Tarek Fatah
Twelve years after 9/11 and the beat goes on. If the news of jihadi terrorist bombings in Boston and Bangalore was not enough to wake us from our collective slumber, the arrests of Chiheb Esseghaier of Montreal and Raed Jaser from Toronto this week certainly should. Though I doubt it.
According to RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia, the two Muslim men were allegedly getting “direction and guidance” from al-Qaida elements in Iran. He added: “Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured.”
While ordinary Canadians and non-Muslims around the world are bewildered by these never-ending news reports of terrorism and alleged plots, the response by the leaders of the Islamic community is the tired old cliche – Islam is a religion of peace, and jihad is simply an “inner struggle.”
The fact is these terrorists are motivated by one powerful belief – the doctrine of armed jihad against the “kuffar” (non-Muslims).
It is worth noting that not a single Muslim cleric since 9/11 has mustered the courage to say the doctrine of armed jihad is defunct and inapplicable in the 21st century. They rightfully denounce terrorism, but dare not denounce jihad.
The armed jihad launched against the infidels, is clearly promoted by the 20th-century writings of such Islamists as Syed Qutb and Hassan al-Banna of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the late Syed Maudoodi of Jamaat-e-Islami of Indo-Pakistan.
Young Muslims across Canada and the U.S. are given booklets titled Towards Understanding Islam, written by Maudoodi. In the booklet, Maudoodi exhorts ordinary Muslims to launch jihad, as in armed struggle, against non-Muslims.
“Jihad is part of this overall defence of Islam,” he writes.
In case the reader is left with any doubt about the meaning of the word “jihad,” Maudoodi clarifies:
“In the language of the Divine Law, this word (jihad) is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims.”
Maudoodi goes on to label Muslims who refuse the call to armed jihad as apostates:
“Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception.”
If Maudoodi’s exhortations are not enough to motivate Muslims to conduct acts of terror, we have the words of the late Hassan al-Banna being distributed in our schools and universities. Al-Banna makes it quite clear that the word “jihad” means armed conflict. He mocks those who claim jihad is merely an internal struggle.
Al-Banna says this redefinition of the term “jihad” is a conspiracy so that “Muslims should become negligent.”
And here is what Syed Qutb, another Egyptian stalwart of the Islamist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, writes in his seminal work on Islam and its relationship with the West, Milestones:
“A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it (non-Muslim country), whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located.”
Unless the leaders of Canadian and American mosques as well as the Islamic organizations denounce the doctrine of jihad as pronounced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami, and distance themselves from the ideology of Qutb, al-Banna and Maudoodi, they stand complicit in the havoc that these jihadis are raining down on the rest of us.
For those who search for the root cause of Islamist terrorism, it’s the doctrine of jihad, stupid.

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Activist complains that CSIS does its job

We have been told since 9/11 and the countless terror plots/attacks since then that we cannot profile people based on their race/religion/any other identifying mark.
Now it appears that we cannot have our intelligence service speak to someone about something they have actually done. From the Hamilton Spectator.

A Hamilton activist has complained to a watchdog committee about two Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents at his door asking questions about his relationship with Iran.
Ken Stone, treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War and a steering committee member of the Canadian Peace Alliance, says he feels the visit was an intimidation tactic.

Why, oh why, would agents from CSIS be interested in talking to Mr. Stone? Well, CSIS isn’t talking but Stone says they were interested in his trip to Iran paid for by the Ahmadinejad regime.

He says the agents knew he had visited Iran to attend a conference in October 2011 about Palestine, and had written about it in The Hamilton Spectator.
“They wanted to know about my relationship with Iran’s government,” he said Monday.
Stone said the costs of attending the conference were paid through Iran’s parliament because of his strong support over the years for establishing a Palestinian state in the Middle East.

So let me get this straight, this dude heads to Iran for a conference on the Palestinian issue hosted and paid for by the Ahmadinejad regime. He has his travel paid for by the same group and he wonders why CSIS might want to ask him questions?
In an op-ed written in February, Stone wrote that he “suffered” a visit and describes the whole ordeal as one of intimidation. In the end he said that he did not co-operate with the CSIS agents and did not ask questions.
Stone has filed a complaint about the visit with SIRC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee. Frankly I would say if CSIS hadn’t visited Stone they would have be negligent.
I don’t agree with having agents stop by someone’s house if they post a thought or two outside the mainstream on Facebook – say Stone’s claim that CSIS and the RCMP are “hatching of phony plots” as part of their racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims in Canada. But Stone did more than post his crazy thoughts online, he went to a conference paid for and run by a hostile country, one that has threatened world peace, killed Canadians and is a state sponsor of terrorism through its support for Hezbollah.
Stone will put this monitoring by CSIS down to his peace and anti-racism activism. I’d put it down to his bad judgment in associating with the regime in Iran.
H/T BCF

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COLUMN: Gunter – Carbon market collapse

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/32166329/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Carbon credit farce collapses … again

by Lorne Gunter
Last Tuesday, April 16, the European carbon-trading market collapsed for the third time since it opened in 2005. This shows just how phony (and futile) are government schemes to cap-and-trade carbon emissions.
It is also very bad news for Premier Alison Redford’s hope to raise Alberta’s fee on such emissions from $15/tonne now to as high as $40/tonne (a figure her government insists it is not contemplating).
Europe’s carbon exchange, the European Trading System (ETS), has been plagued from the start because it is and always has been a complete political charade.
Eager to win credit for being “green,” European governments decided eight years ago to place limits on the amount of carbon dioxide individual countries and industries could emit each year. This is the “cap” in “cap-and-trade.” Businesses that were likely to exceed their caps could then “trade” for (i.e. buy) more cap space from companies that had extra.
But the scheme collapsed almost immediately.
There is no natural market for carbon credits the way there is for cars, bananas or paperclips. To the extent there is any market at all, it is entirely because governments decree one should exist.
The trouble is governments are lousy at mimicking the role of markets. And they proved this in Europe in 2005 by giving out too many emission credits, initially. Most companies had more than enough credits, so they didn’t need to buy more. This bureaucratic miscalculation drove prices way down.
The 2008 worldwide financial crisis is blamed for the second collapse. Yet it is just as likely that fraudulent trading was behind the second plummet. The peak price achieved by the ETS — about $30 a tonne — occurred in the early fall of 2008, just before the financial collapse.
But at just that time, Europol — the European police service — detected unusual spikes in prices on the ETS. Their investigation determined that nearly 90% of trades were fraudulent, attempts by organized criminals to scam governments out of about $7 billion in tax credits for going “green.”
After the Europol investigation, the number of certified traders on the exchange went from 1,265 to fewer than 200 in a matter of weeks, as the scammers were delisted.
Governments hadn’t detected this themselves because the whole idea that carbon trading is a way of saving the planet is a political false-front. Governments created the ETS to give the appearance of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but so long as some businesses were buying credits and some selling (and governments were skimming their cut off the top), political leaders truly didn’t care whether the trading was real or having any impact on the environment.
The third collapse came last week after European Parliament MPs voted not to remove nearly 800 million tonnes of credits from the exchange. There are still too many credits on offer. The price last Friday was around $4/tonne, not the $40 Alison Redford claims not to want to impose (but really does want to), nor even the $15 her government currently imposes.
And the European price is projected to fall to as low as $1 a tonne by the end of the year. How could it do otherwise? Without governments creating these markets, forcing companies to participate and setting phony prices, these markets would not exist. They are entirely artificial.
An American carbon exchange went out of business in 2010 when the price there fell to under 10¢ a tonne. The price on the Chicago Carbon Exchange was even lower than on the ETS because companies were not forced to participate.
Carbon trading is nothing more than an elaborate way to tax carbon use. It is a political scam and in no way helpful for the environment.

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COLUMN: Akin – Enviro lobby fails on Keystone

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/31518980/?size=400x400&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Green lobby swings and misses on Keystone pipeline

by David Akin
On Earth Day, of all days, environmental activists woke up Monday to some grim news.
Despite the pleas of Hollywood celebrities, despite protesters chaining themselves to the White House fence, despite the full-court PR blitz from professional campaigners like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, North Americans think the Keystone oil pipeline is a good idea.
For all the successes it has had in moving public opinion its way on other environmental issues, the green lobby has faceplanted on this one.
A new poll says “comfortable majorities” in both the U.S. and Canada favour approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.
It’s just the latest in a long line of polls in the last few years which have shown strong support on both sides of the border for the controversial project.
Let’s look at the most recent data, collected by Canadian pollster Nik Nanos through his work as a public policy scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
First, Nanos asked about 1,000 people in each country if they had even heard about this pipeline, which would carry crude oil and bitumen from the Alberta oilsands south to refineries in Texas. Well, just about everyone in Canada – 92% — along with 75% of Americans surveyed had heard about it.
Nanos says the margin of error on his poll is 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Nanos then asked how people felt about the project. Though Hollywood heavyweights like Robert Redford, Darryl Hannah and Leonardo DiCaprio tried to demonize the pipeline, North Americans by and large shrugged off their concerns, Nanos found.
In Canada, 60% feel “positive” or “somewhat positive” about the project ,while 34% felt “negative” or “somewhat negative.” In the U.S., it was 70% “positive” and just 24% negative.
But, of course, Keystone is not yet a reality and won’t be until U.S. President Barack Obama approves the project. For Obama, it would be a major job-creator in a year in which his party, the Democrats, want to win some congressional races to take control of both houses in Congress.
If Obama is eyeing the polls, he’ll approve on that alone. Nanos found 74% of Americans support or somewhat support approval of Keystone vs. 21% who do not support. In Canada, 68% would agree with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s assessment of Keystone as a “no-brainer” for approval vs. 28% who do not support approval.
The green lobby’s base case against Keystone has always been that it contributes to higher greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It doesn’t matter that the U.S. State Department says there’s no truth to that statement; the green lobby has been betting that climate change would be a higher priority than jobs and energy security.
And, sure enough, Nanos found a majority of Canadians and Americans do agree that reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be a high priority. But if it’s going to be one or the other, energy security – that’s what Keystone represents – trumps the environmental objective.
There’s lessons for both sides here in the broader pipeline debate.
Keystone has broad popular support because it’s seen as promoting energy security and independence.
The Northern Gateway pipeline is likely more problematic because the energy security narrative doesn’t fit with that project. Greenpeace and other campaigners may see success blocking Northern Gateway that they are not going to see on Keystone.
And what about new ideas like a west-to-east Canadian pipeline, an idea where both Conservatives and New Democrats in Ottawa might agree? The lesson from Nanos’ poll is that if pipelines or other proposals can be sold as helping promote North American energy security, those projects may be tough for the green lobby to block.

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VIDEO: Terror in Canada, the sorted history

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COLUMN: Agar – Terrorism on the homefront

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/31919716/?size=400x400&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Terrorism can happen here

by Jerry Agar
Numbers remain uncertain, but the RCMP is reporting that deaths in the horrific bombing Monday of a VIA Rail train and the bridge trestle that plunged the train and its passengers into the Niagara River will most certainly be in the hundreds.
No suspects have been arrested.
Of course, I made that up. It didn’t happen. But according to authorities Monday, that type of attack was planned by two al-Qaida-assisted, terror suspects.
Strangely, despite the horror we saw last week in Boston, too many people, many in the media, believe it couldn’t happen here.
Why is that? Is it the triumph of hope over experience?
Will they wake up now?
In Boston the accused bombers are young Muslim men who were living in America.
Four “average teens” from London, Ont. are being investigated as Islamist terrorists. Two of them died during a January attack on a gas facility in Algeria, which killed 37 hostages and 29 terrorists. (Maybe it is a good thing the gas plants in Ontario are moving targets.)
Many people not only choose to believe we have no cause to worry, they openly mock those who suggest we do — and I am speaking from personal experience.
The London four, the Toronto 18, Omar Khadr and the bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal apparently hasn’t changed their minds.
They may not have visited the CSIS web page to read: “The absence of violence here at home does not mean the absence of terrorist activity.
Most activities in Canada support actions elsewhere linked to homeland conflicts.” The fact that we have not been attacked directly, apart from the Air India bombing, is testament to good police work and that up to now Canada has not been a prime target for terrorists.
Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan Halevi, director of research for the Orient Research Group Ltd. and a senior researcher of the Middle East and Radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, stated after the Boston bombing that terrorist leaders in the Middle East are beginning to turn from action they see as protection of their homeland to attacking the enemy over here.
While CSIS investigates and attempts to prevent violence from terrorists motivated by the environment, American militia groups, anti-abortionists and secessionists, the service states: “CSIS dedicates most of its counter-terrorism resources to religious extremism, which the Government of Canada considers to be the most serious threat to the safety of Canadians.” Let’s not kid ourselves or tip toe around in politically correct pyjamas.
They are not talking about the Lutherans.
CSIS declares, “Sunni Islamic extremists such as the members of the al-Qaida network, for example, are often well-educated. They are security-conscious, well-funded and resourceful. Furthermore, they are masterful at exploiting the media to influence public opinion, and at using democratic institutions to further their cause or to avoid just penalty.”
Facts such as these are, I am sure, distressing to the majority of Muslims in Canada who are good, decent people. With all due respect to them it makes none of us safer to pretend it isn’t so.
When young men turn to violence against society, the immediate question seems to be, “How were they radicalized?” Perhaps we should be more concerned about who is radicalizing them, and where.
— Agar is the 9 a.m. to noon host on Newstalk 1010

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Meet Brian in Toronto and Burlington

http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resize/id/33341195/?size=500x500&site=blogs&authtoken=3ef318efc0d861959b4b4c43bdd7f1d6&quality=90Want to meet Brian Lilley and get a copy of CBC Exposed?
Two events this Saturday.
Saturday April 20th at noon join Brian at the Bay and Bloor Indigo store in Toronto.
Also on Saturday April 20th Brian will appear at the Indigo store in Burlington –  1250 Brant Street – at 3PM.

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VIDEO: Scots left out of Canadian history at museum

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Trudeau looks for “root causes” and blames “exclusion” for Boston bombing

In the newly launched attack ads against Justin Trudeau the Conservatives are trying to convince Canadians that the elected Liberal leader is “in over his head.” They want to make people question Trudeau’s lack of experience. If he has many more comments like the ones that aired on CBC last night, then he will just help prove the ad.
First, here is the spot:
Now here is what he said on CBC.

PETER MANSBRIDGE (HOST, CBC’S “MANSBRIDGE ONE ON ONE“):(Ottawa – Yesterday) Let me try to ask this as fairly as I can, because it’s only a couple of hours after something has happened that clearly was not an accident, in Boston. People have died, many people are injured. You’re the Canadian prime minister, what do you do?JUSTIN TRUDEAU (LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA):First thing, you offer support and sympathy and condolences and, you know, can we send down, you know, EMTs or, I mean, as we contributed after 9/11? I mean, is there any material immediate support we have we can offer? And then at the same time, you know, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes. Now we don’t know now whether it was, you know, terrorism or a single crazy or, you know, a domestic issue or a foreign issue, I mean, all of those questions. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from? I mean, yes, we need to make sure that we’re promoting security and we’re, you know, keeping our borders safe and, you know, monitoring the kinds of, you know, violent subgroups that happen around. But we also have to monitor and encourage people to not point fingers at each other and lay blame for personal ills or societal ills on a specific group, whether it be the West or the government or Bostonians or whatever it is, because it’s that idea of dividing humans against ourselves, of pointing out that they’re not like us and, you know, in order to achieve our political goals we can kill innocents here. That’s something that no society in the world that is healthy, regardless of ideology, will accept.

I’m sorry Mr. Trudeau but this is not an act of exclusion. From Wolfe Tone to the September 11th bombers there is a long history of people being fully integrated into society but taking up armed struggle against it. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at this recent CSIS report on Islamic radicals in Canada as reported on The Globe and Mail. The claim has been that people turn to Islamic radicalization because of exclusion. CSIS says no.
History says no as well.
This gut instinct to go to the “root causes” argument and blame “exclusion simply shows Trudeau at his most honest.

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