• Canada’s Welcome Mat To Crime

As Canadian taxpayers contemplate personal debt ceilings, increasing costs of living, increasing taxes, and regressing net incomes, they are being failed by a broken judicial system and police forces who are no longer empowered or willing to act in their defense and protection.

Grasping for the good life, the average Canadian family has enshrouded itself with over $100,000 of debt, which represents a debt-to-income ratio of 150%. Admitting it is difficult, and discussing it in detail brings certain shades of shame, but the stress is undeniable. That stress has consequences. One of them is the blindness it brings to the breakdown occurring in the broader society. That blindness seems like complacency, however, when you’re overburdened with the challenge of feeding your family month to month, keeping up with what your own government is or is not doing, rarely makes your priority list.

While Canadian taxpayers were averting their attention throughout the past generation, their streets became littered with crime. Whether you visit Vancouver, Toronto, or Edmonton, on almost every street corner you cannot miss the drug pushers. The drug industry has a hierarchy that is unmistakeable, from the kid with the hoody and the backpack pretending to be waiting for a bus, to the low level distributor running low riding foreign subcompacts, to the black Chrysler 300s, to the Black Cadillac Escalades with $5,000 wheels, and all with necessary and prescribed blacked out windows, the drug industry command food chain is obvious. Obvious to all, but the judicial system.

Generally, there is the pernicious attitude that, “As long it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care.” Along come the gang wars, with high caliber, automatic weapons blaring, and spraying SUVs with bullets. The latest one on sunny Sunday afternoon in front of the high-end Delta Grand Hotel on the Kelowna, BC, waterfront. Temporarily, or for a few days at best, attitudes change then go back to, “As long it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care.”

Unfortunately, we don’t care, and neither do the police, the lawyers, the judges, or the liberal minds of the legislators who evolved Canada’s judicial system, laws and sentencing guidelines.

To keep the populace quiet, the suggestion promulgated by the media is that this particular shooting, for example, was a “targeted hit.” What a classy, diverting phrase this is. Oh, well, that makes it OK, “It's just criminals killing one another, which does not concern me.” Of course, the fact that a salon was also peppered with bullets from the automatic assault weapon didn’t quite make the front pages. And still, we don’t care.

The police departments have for years rationalized their lack of aggressive effort against the proliferation of criminals and criminality, by whining that their efforts are a waste of time since the courts let the criminals go when the criminals are brought in, . . . so what’s the point? The Court system in Canada is so lax that a murderer, Sasan Ansari, can kill Josh Goos at the Hoolyburn Country Club in West Vancouver, to whom he owes $100,000, by stabbing him 30 times with video evidence, and he gets two and half years for the crime.

Canadian taxpayers believe that their judicial system contains Sentencing Guidelines because their judges tell them so. That is an outright lie. Guidelines are virtually non existent because judges’ egos will not succumb to being instructed or told what to do. They also use the rationalization that each crime is committed in a different context from the previous one. Excuses are simply, that, excuses. There should be tight guidelines and regulations for crimes, rather than loose, very loose, recommendations.

There should also be a legislated shift away from the broken liberal belief that all criminals can be rehabilitated. This is one Trudeau legacy that must be put to rest conclusively. The politically correct attitude that people change and can be “improved,” may be occasionally true, but is not the rule. It is devastating the streets of Canada to backwaters where all doors are locked.

For two decades now, the British Columbia joke is that marijuana is the biggest industry in the Province. In truth, the immigration business is bigger, but drugs have become a major multi billion dollar industry that is enormous by any comparative measure.

It’s time the courts quit hiding behind the veil of poor guidelines, and the police quit hiding behind the poor record of Canadian courts. If the trend continues, Canada’s civil society will disintegrate to unrecognizable degradation which its children and grandchildren will regret.

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• Gang Receives Succor From Federal Judge In Gang-Haven Vancouver

Canada’s Federal Court brings new meaning to coddling criminality. A Federal Judge has handed down a decision that will heretofore ensure that Canadian authorities will address criminal gangs with proper decorum and “quiet” respect.

Federal Court Judge The Honourable Mr. Justice Michael L. Phelan has, in one simple judgment, backhanded Revenue Canada, and the Gang Task Force. Justice Phelan has stymied and impeded any future approach government officers and officials might make on gangs and their members.

Here is the heart of his decision on behalf of all Canadians (Docket: T-555-08, Citation: 2110 FC 448): “THIS COURT ORDERS that the Applicants are awarded fees of $200,000 plus disbursements of $13,986.92. The Applicants are to have their costs of this motion of $3,000 plus disbursements of $500.”

The applicants are Ryan Murphy et al, . . . et al being his UN gang member associates, and the respondent is the Minister of National Revenue, which is in effect the Canadian taxpayer. Canadian taxpayers, . . . the gang thanks you.

Why would a judge of the Federal Court hand down such an astounding decision? Why would the Court in one bang of the gavel render ineffective any future investigations into the countless billions of dollars that are being made illegally and purchasing businesses and estates from Victoria to Halifax? Why would the Federal Court have a problem with Revenue Canada digging into the non-existent sources of income which materialize so readily into so much material and visible wealth? Why would a Federal Judge decree that the Revenue Canada Agency (CRA) should in effect care little about its own personal safety when serving Requests for Information on very well known and dangerous criminals? Why would a Federal Judge have a problem with the CRA investigators teaming up with Gang Task Force members to deliver request letters to gang members?

Justice Phelan’s stated reasoning was that “Police presence was clear and visible and highly obtrusive. The service of the documents was generally carried out late at night, with multiple police cruisers present, lights on and with all the paraphernalia of a police raid.”

So? Are all Canadians now suddenly in fear of being similarly served? Is this what this judge thinks is, . . . protecting Canadians from overt and visible harassment from the police?

Shouldn’t the authorities have some room for common sense? Shouldn’t Revenue Canada be used to launch investigations into illicit earnings? Don’t most Canadians know that the neighbor just down the road with NO visible income, but with the mansion and fleet of cars in the driveway, might be, just might be, in the drug business, for example?

If the authorities have evidence of such, let them have at it, and if they break the law in the process, then charge them, or fire them, or both. It flies in the face of common sense to think that if what occurred in this case is allowed by the judicial system, then we would all see multiple police cars at our doors delivering requests for itemized income sources. Canadians should beware of those pretending to defend them against the beginnings of “slippery slopes.” Canadians should beware of this judge.

A judge pandering to an ephemeral notion that his decision, right off the scale of common sense, protects the public, is a twisted percept rooted in self importance. The police admits that the gang problem in Canada, particularly Vancouver, is out-of-control. Isn’t the Canadian public getting tired of witnessing its police force stifled by the courts?

This judge’s sanctimonious decision panders to some righteous percept that the judiciary grasps elements pertaining to the social order that society at large cannot possibly comprehend. For too many years, the Canadian courts have been ensconced in the belief that they have unique abilities to perceive realities that their broader community is incapable of considering. These former lawyers are wrong.

Their many incomprehensible decisions are not so difficult to fathom. It is not the nature and complexity of the cases that society cannot understand. Canadian society cannot and should not accede to decisions which negatively affect the social setting. Decisions such as the one handed down by Justice Phelan add to the government’s failure to accomplish its most critical purpose – preserving the safety of citizens and their property. When our public schools have pushers selling drugs to 7 and 10 year olds, the system is broken. The courts have much blame to shoulder for this calamity, along with Canada's Parliament.

This court order was not about the prevention of entry onto slippery slopes, but was the result of incompetence on the Federal bench. The decision should be reversed.

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• Show Trial Goes To New York

The significance of continuing growth in unemployment ranks has been obliterated from news headlines by an unexpected decision by the Administration: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay Sept. 11 terrorist detainees will be tried in a civilian federal courthouse in New York.

Democratic support for the decision argues that a civil trial would be a demonstration of America's might and moral certainty, and such a trial would be further confirmation that America’s justice system is the envy of the world. Republicans counter that demonstrating such civility toward foreign terrorists seeking to destroy America’s way of life is a servile and underserved accommodation which would provide a dangerous platform.

This Administration is loath to acknowledge the term "War," particularly as is relates to religious extremists. Does this Administration feel this way because the extremists have bases in various countries and are funded from numerous sources scattered around the world, and therefore it is reticent to antagonize those foreign governments? Is there a concern that acknowledging a war would by inference mean an indirect war on countries from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia? Events wherein people using powerful weapons, funded with hundreds of millions of dollars, launch attacks against a country, its people, its embassies and other outposts, are not just “criminal acts,” they are Wars. Pretending that perpetrators of such acts are not “at war,” but are conducting a broad, concerted effort of criminality, flies in the face of rather ordinary common sense.

Civil trials pointing the guns of American jurisprudence at the most infamous terrorists to have ever committed crimes against America on its own soil will become venues that will launch a new crop of lawyers onto the international stage. Could we dare suspect the Administration believes that a New York City trial for these most visible terrorists will keep the “blame Bush” fires alive.

The loud crowing we hear about exposing the world to the American judicial system is disingenuous. The Islamic world already knows the American system is different from its own and doesn't care how. Most Islamic countries are dictatorships, by any other name, whose leaders don’t much desire open societies, or an American style rule of law. They know it, we know it, and the rest of the world already knows it.

On the other hand, a civil trial, and the legal hams and egos who will run that circus will expose America’s espionage and intelligence systems, and methodologies. We already know waterboarding was used, however, we can expect that it will be used by the defense, and in so doing, once again revisit the application of such torture, purposely putting the previous administration on trial.

We should note that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the five suspects prosecutors would likely seek the death penalty. This is not a very definitive statement, but he had to reassure New Yorkers that they would not likely run into these killers while shopping on Park Avenue. We should also note that Holder’s law firm, Covington & Burling, represents seventeen detainees of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. In time we will discover the true nature of such a conflict of interest. More importantly, given the nature of civil trials, the rights provided to (usually) American defendants, the discovery process and the eventual appeals process, American citizens will not find the hands of justice administering punishment on these fanatics until well over a decade has passed.

Fanaticism is deaf to all pleadings, be they judicial, political or personal entreaties. Pretending that a federal civil trial will be a victory against terrorism is flailing against an ill wind, and will accomplish little but inflate the self-righteous.

True and pure statesmanship should be untainted by idiosyncrasies of politics, or political provocation, however, this is evidently too much to ask for. This trial is guaranteed to become a proverbial three-ring circus. We may also become baffled as publicity ignites strange images on the streets of distant cities around the world, as lawyers play their games on this venue in New York freshly served up by the Administration.

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