De-policing refers to the phenomenon where cops are told, either directly or implicitly, to ghost away from their tasks and stop enforcing certain laws and to stop policing certain neighbourhoods and individuals.
Law enforcement aren’t happy with what’s happening. The public shouldn’t be either.
Read True North’s Anthony Furey’s latest in the Toronto Sun.
There are politicians across Canada that are actually telling cops to not do their jobs.
True North’s Anthony Furey says this isn’t fair to the police and it’s especially unfair to victims of crime and everyday Canadians.
It’s time to let the cops do their jobs.
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Another lawyer who helped free convicted terrorist Omar Khadr has received a judicial appointment from the Liberal government.
Nathan Whitling was one of three judicial appointments announced by the Department of Justice on Friday.
According to Minister of Justice and Attorney General David Lametti, Whitling will be the Associate Chief Justice as of May 17, 2019.
Whitling successfully represented Omar Khadr in March 2019, when an Alberta judge ordered that his war crimes sentence had expired.
“All those conditions that were restricting his liberty up to this point are now gone, so for example he can apply for a passport, he can talk to his sister, he can travel around the world or around Canada without having to seek permission,” said Whitling about the ruling.
Whitling is not the first lawyer to have worked for Khadr to be appointed to a judicial role. John Norris who represented Khadr from 2011 to 2013 was appointed as a judge of the federal court in 2018.
While living as a free man, Khadr has also been seeking a way out of his US war crimes sentence after pleading guilty for his role in the death of American soldier Christopher Speer.
A civilian court ruled that Khadr can’t force a military court to have an expedited hearing for his appeal.
As part of his original plea bargain with the US, Khadr’s original 40-year sentence was reduced to only eight years and was allowed to serve the rest of his sentence in Canada.
After being released from prison, Khadr sued the Canadian government for allegedly violating his rights. Instead of fighting the lawsuit in court, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau settled with the convicted war criminal for $10.5 million.
Since the settlement, Khadr has appeared as a featured guest on a French-language CBC program where he received a standing ovation from the audience.
As exclusively reported by True North, Khadr also gave a keynote speech at Dalhousie University.
This past week, the Ford government announced plans to provide publicly-funded therapy for Ontarians who suffer from anxiety and depression. According to Ontario’s Health Minister Christine Elliot, the government has invested $20 million into this program, which is part of the government’s overall plan to build a “comprehensive and connected” provincial health system. While this is an important step in addressing many problems caused by mental illness, the government should also expand this program to include therapy to treat another social ill often ignored: family breakdown.
Ensuring stable families should be an important policy goal of any government in this country, and especially those led by conservatives, who have long recognized the support system inherent in the family structure helps ensure better social and economic outcomes for individuals, especially children. Despite these benefits, family breakdown – including divorce, separation and dysfunctional familial relationships – has been on the rise in the last half-century, and Canadian governments have done little to help reverse this trend. Expanding publicly-funded therapy to include additional therapy options for families, such as couples or marriage counselling, would be a step in the right direction to address these problems.
This should not be a radical idea, as the harm experienced by family members during periods of breakdown is well documented. For example, research conducted by the UK Centre for the Social Justice indicates that children raised in broken homes are more likely to grow up in poorer housing; experience behavioural problems; perform less well in school; experience pregnancy at a younger age; report more depressive symptoms; and report higher levels of smoking, drinking, and drug use during adolescence and adulthood. If governments continue to ignore these problems, they are doing a disservice to children who experience significant vulnerability in these situations.
The harm is not just limited to children. Parents, grandparents and extended family members also can be negatively affected by family breakdown. For example, a study by Elizabeth G. Menaghan of Ohio State University found that adults tend to develop depressive symptoms even years after divorce due to greater economic problems, perceptions that one’s standard of living has deteriorated, and a lesser availability of close, confiding relationships. Meanwhile, studies indicate that many extended family members and grandparents can lose contact with child relatives following a divorce – especially in situations in which one parent is no longer in the picture – reducing the available support system for the child.
Research indicates that couples therapy is effective in reducing the occurrence of family breakdown, and thus the appropriate solution for governments to pursue. The American Psychological Association reports that Emotionally-Focused Therapy – the predominant form of couples therapy practiced, which focuses on changing the constricted patterns of interaction between couples and encouraging changed behaviour and thoughts – has an approximate 75% success rate. By publicly supporting the therapy, Canadian governments would be concurrently reducing the stigma surrounding couples therapy while helping reduce family breakdown and its associated harms.
It is true that for some couples that therapy will not be effective – especially in cases where there is physical and emotional abuse presence – and thereby family breakdown is inevitable for some. But if the Ford government intends to publicly fund therapy services to reduce societal harm, they should not stop at treatments for depression and anxiety, but also include treatment couples therapy to help reduce the harm caused by family breakdown in our society.
A First Nations president claims he was told to educate himself on Indigenous issues while passing by a Wet’suwet’en protest on the steps of the British Columbia legislature.
President of the Tahltan Central Government Chad Day said in a Facebook post on Wednesday morning that a woman and two masked protesters approached him and told him he knew nothing about First Nations matters.
“If you’re not standing with us and part of the resistance, you need to leave. Only warriors willing to rise are welcome here,” the young woman allegedly said to Day.
“The resistance? Are we in a Star Wars movie right now?” Day said. “Come on you guys, anyone here pretending to know the collective opinion of the Wet’suwet’en Nation is being rather naive at this point. Give their people some time to deal with their own laws and issues. You are not helping anything.”
According to Day, security guards posted at the site warned him to not engage with any of the people present.
“Maybe you should educate yourself about the Royal Proclamation and Indigenous issues,” Day alleges a masked protester told him.
In his post, Day explains that he was shocked to discover that the protests have been going on for eight days. According to him, the camps at the steps of the legislature were littered with garbage and dirty clothes among other refuse.
“What’s happening at the legislature right now is absolutely disgraceful and embarrassing to this province and its citizens, including Indigenous peoples, on so many levels,” wrote Day.
This is not the first alleged incident in which an Indigenous leader has been accosted by protesters who claim to represent First Nations.
British Columbia MLA and former Haisla Nation chief councillor Ellis Ross said on Twitter last month that a protester yelled in his face “saying I should stand up for Indigenous rights.”
The Supreme Court of Canada has declined to hear five challenges to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
The challenges from five BC groups determined to stop the project were all told on Thursday the Supreme Court will not hear the cases, which had been dismissed by the Federal Court of Appeal in September.
Behind the challenge were the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, B.C. Nature, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and a group of young climate activists.
The groups argued that the federal government’s July 2019 approval of the pipeline expansion did not properly consult with Indigenous people.
Twelve groups initially challenged the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion with the Federal Court of Appeal in 2019, but in September the court only allowed six to partially proceed.
After the Federal Court of Appeal ultimately dismissed those six challenges, five of the groups asked the Supreme Court to review their cases: these appeals were denied.
The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, once constructed, will add a second pipeline onto the existing path from Edmonton to Burnaby.
In 2018, the Federal Court of Appeal rejected cabinet approval for Trans Mountain, saying the government did not do enough consultation with Indigenous people.
After another round of consultations, cabinet approved Trans Mountain again in July, 2019. The five groups all argued that the government still did not do enough consultation.
Alberta Attorney General Doug Schweitzer said the decision by the Supreme Court comes at an important time for Canada.
“It’s another positive step to development, to making sure we get this pipe built. It’s critical to have that here in Canada, so we’re encouraged by that,” he said.
“The bigger concern that we have is ensuring that the rule of law is upheld. The last few weeks, we’ve seen a bunch of social disorder across our entire country. We want to make sure that the Trans Mountain pipeline is built.“
Trans Mountain, which has already begun construction of the expansion, thanked the Supreme Court for its decision in a statement.
“After many years of consultation, reviews and approvals, we will continue to move forward and build the expansion project in respect of communities and for the benefit of Canadians,” the company said.
China’s ambassador to Canada accused the media in the west of spreading “fake news” by covering China’s mass internment of minorities.
At a conference on Wednesday, Ambassador Cong Peiwu suggested western media were purposefully misleading the public about the treatment of minorities under the communist regime.
“Some of the western media can be misleading, you know,” he said. “So be careful. A lot of fake news.”
The statement came at the Conference of Defence Associations Institute in Ottawa when Cong was questioned about internment camps in the remote Xinjiang region.
Cong claimed the facilities are actually “vocational training centres” – a claim that evoked laughter from the audience of security experts.
Since 2017, China has interned between one and two million people in the Xinjiang region, the largest mass internment anywhere since the Second World War. The majority of the imprisoned are from the Muslim Uyghur minority.
While the Chinese government claims the internments are for counterterrorism reasons, international watchdogs and reporters have found that indoctrination and torture are tactics commonly used in these camps.
A report last week by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that interned Uyghurs are also being used as forced labour in factories across China, with many popular technology brands like Huawei and Apple being implicated.
Cong denied the findings of this report.
“With the help of the local governments, they have found good jobs, decent jobs. So that is good for the stability in the region,” he said.
At the same conference, Cong praised the Canadian government for not restricting flights from China due to coronavirus concerns.
Despite this and other coordination on fighting the spread of coronavirus, Cong says this alone will not fix Canada-China relations.
With files from Andrew Lawton.
The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) is in the early stages of shedding its junior “seaman” ranks for gender-neutral alternatives.
Department of National Defence spokesperson Lt. Jamie Bresolin told True North that naval leadership decided to change the ranks to reflect the more progressive character of the force.
“The RCN, one of Canada’s top-employers in 2019 according to Forbes, prides itself on inculcating an inclusive, diverse, gender-neutral and safe workplace,” said Bresolin.
“Therefore, it was recently determined by naval leadership that an organization that has long-since had gender-neutral terms for its personnel – sailor or shipmate – needs reconsider some few rank titles that are rich in history, but perhaps not reflective of the modern, progressive service that is the RCN today.”
Among the junior ranks up for a title change are ordinary seaman, able seaman, leading seaman and master seaman.
Currently, no alternative ranks have been decided on and the timeline for the change remains uncertain.
“At this time, as the change process remains in preliminary stages, no decision has yet been taken regarding new rank names. Further, the timeline for decision about any potential new names also remains unknown,” said Bresolin.
A screenshot obtained by True North shows the private Facebook group Fleet Club Atlantic asking junior ranking members based at CFB Halifax for input on the rank change.
“I have been tasked to reach out to the Junior Ranks. CRCN is looking to change the name of the Junior Ranks […] Specifically he is looking at changing Seaman/Seaman to something else. For an example the term “Hand (Leading Hand, Master Hand, etc) or “Rate” (Ordinary Rate, Able Rate, etc) have been already passed around,” claims one user.
The RCN and the Canadian Coast Guard have been struggling to find new recruits to man their new vessels.
“It’s good to get all those resources, all this new technology and new ships. But without people, I’m not going to be able to operate or to support or to manage the operations. So I need people,” said Canadian Coast Guard Commissioner Mario Pelletier.
According to Global News, the coast guard is short approximately 1,000 people needed to fill 15% its vacant positions, while the navy is short 850 recruits.
Justin Trudeau’s government has reached a deal with the hereditary chiefs who oppose the Coastal GasLink pipeline – except the deal has nothing to do with the pipeline, and the chiefs haven’t even agreed to it yet. This has been nothing but a stalling tactic by the protesters, True North’s Andrew Lawton says.
Also on the show: Brampton wants an Indigenous land acknowledgement at every city-owned facility, and Concordia University dietary researcher Prof. Sylvia Santosa joins to discuss why we should view obesity as a disease and not a choice.
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Jason Kenney publicly endorsed Erin O’Toole’s Conservative leadership bid in an email to Conservative Party of Canada members Thursday afternoon.
In the letter, Kenney embraced O’Toole as the “true blue” leader the party needs.
“I saw his passion for serving our veterans, his relentless work ethic, and his common sense in solving difficult political challenges,” Kenney wrote of O’Toole.
“That’s the leadership we need. Erin O’Toole respects the breadth of our big tent coalition. Every conservative would be welcome in a party led by Erin.”
Kenney praised some of O’Toole’s platform announcements including legislation that would make blockading Canadian infrastructure illegal.
“I am pleased to hear that, as Prime Minister, he would make it illegal to blockade critical infrastructure and will designate major pipelines as nationally-strategic projects so we can get them built and get Canadian oil and gas to world markets,” wrote Kenney.
“We need a leader who is competent and principled. A leader who won’t run away from conservative principles under pressure from the media or the Left.”
Prior to his endorsement of O’Toole, Kenney had indicated his hopes that former Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose would have made a “brilliant leader,” though Ambrose ultimately opted not to run.
O’Toole is among eight approved candidates running for the party’s leadership.
As of yet only O’Toole and Peter MacKay have passed the $300,000 and 3,000 endorsement benchmark required to be on the election ballot.