Justin Trudeau hasn’t found a left-wing cause that he hasn’t liked, but apparently, the legacy of Hugo Chavez (continued by Nicolás Maduro) in Venezuela is just too much for the Liberal government.
But that’s not the case for Canada’s largest union. CUPE, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers won’t stand for this.
True North’s Anthony Furey has more.
One of the most powerful moments in President Donald Trump’s latest State of The Union address wasn’t anything he said on domestic politics, but a remark on foreign affairs.
Venezuela is in shambles right now – with a mass exodus of refugees, crime and inflation running rampant and there’s now sadly something called “the Venezuela diet” that explains how people are losing weight for lack of food.
Pretty much everyone except for Canadian public sector union leaders agree that this is a mess and can’t continue. And most sensible leaders agree that President Nicolas Maduro has to go and be replaced temporarily by National Assembly leader Juan Guaido, until proper elections can be held.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland are on board with this, and Freeland has even been helping to lead the charge. Although if there was one quibble to make with how they’re addressing this topic it’s that they’re letting an elephant in the room go unmentioned.
Yes, Maduro is a problem. But he’s not the origins of the problem. And it’s not so much that he’s some sort of natural brute dictator. No, the problem springs from his ideology. He’s a socialist. A diehard socialist who is just continuing the failed legacy of strongman Hugo Chavez.
If Maduro was, say, a free market capitalist you can bet the country wouldn’t be facing the turmoil that’s now crippling the country of over 30 million people.
Yet there has been no mention of the “s” word from Freeland and certainly not from Trudeau, who previously offered up a warm eulogy of Fidel Castro and has stated he admired China’s for its “basic dictatorship”.
A little bit would go a long way to helping young Canadians understand the inevitable ills of socialism. But where Trudeau fails to say anything, Trump steps up to the plate.
“Two weeks ago, the United States officially recognized the legitimate government of Venezuela, and its new interim president, Juan Guaido,” Trump said. “We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom — and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.
“Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country… America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination
Here Trump isn’t just making an important statement on what’s happening in Venezuela, but firing a warning shot at the upcoming young legislators in the United States (and one much older one named Bernie Sanders) who think socialism is cool and trendy.
There is a very real risk that today’s young, the sort who strut around downtown wearing Che Guevara shirts, will try to send us further down the socialist path. It would be nice if the likes of Trudeau showed some leadership in preventing that.
Convicted murderer and former terrorist Omar Khadr is asking a judge to cancel the remainder of his eight year sentence.
Khadr, 32, has been living under generous bail conditions in Alberta for the last three years while he appeals his sentence.
His lawyers are arguing that had he not been out on bail, his sentence would have expired by now.
In 2010, a U.S. military commission sentenced him to eight years for war crimes committed in Afghanistan while fighting against Canada and our allies alongside the Taliban.
While originally sentenced at Guantanamo Bay Prison, Khadr was moved to a Canadian prison in 2012.
In 2015, a Canadian judge approved his release on bail pending his appeal in the U.S. Technically, the clock stopped ticking on his sentence and he still has three years left to go.
Had Khadr served out his full sentence, he would have been released in October of 2018.
Despite still having three years left to serve, Khadr wants the youth court to simply terminate that sentence.
“The youth court judge does have the authority to just simply terminate the sentence and say, ‘It’s now over’,” said his lawyer Nate Whitling.
This may not be the case, however, since Khadr was moved to Canada to serve his sentence through an international treaty, and it isn’t clear if the provincial court can constitutionally nullify such an agreement.
Khadr, a Canadian citizen by birth, grew up in an “al Qaeda family” and was captured in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban. He was found guilty of terrorism and war crimes by a U.S. military commission as an alleged al Qaeda fighter.
In 2012, Khadr pleaded guilty to killing U.S. Army Medic Sgt. Christopher Speer in Afghanistan. Because of this plea bargain, he was moved to a Canadian prison.
He later changed his mind and is now appealing his U.S. conviction.
Khadr also sued the Canadian government, claiming that his charter rights were not upheld during interrogations with visiting Canadian officials at Guantanamo Bay.
In 2017, the Canadian government quietly issued an apology and awarded Khadr with $10.5 million for how he was treated at Guantanamo Bay, despite not being required to do so by law.
A judge will hear Khadr’s application later this month.
A bombshell Globe and Mail report says key players in the Prime Minister’s Office tried to get former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin over bribes to Libyan officials.
A former SNC-Lavalin vice-president was charged with making over $100,000 in illegal contributions to the Liberal Party of Canada and numerous candidates. Company representatives have also met with Prime Minister’s Office officials 14 times since 2017 to lobby the government on “justice.”
True North’s Andrew Lawton has the latest.
A group in Windsor, Ontario is hoping to turn their community into a so-called “sanctuary city.”
Sanctuary cities are an American invention — designed to help illegal migrants in the U.S. evade federal deportation orders. Left-wing activists in Canada have recently taken to appropriating this policy and importing it to our country.
Sanctuary cities are known for refusing to verify a person’s immigration status before that person is eligible to receive taxpayer-funded municipal services, be it a library card, subsidized housing or even employment with the local government.
Regardless of immigration status, sanctuary cities provide all individuals with the same services and privileges as legal tax-paying residents and Canadian citizens.
These policies, however, also encourage more illegal immigration and can help to facilitate dangerous criminals hiding from law enforcement.
The Windsor Law chapter of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers recently organized a panel to discuss how a U.S.-style sanctuary policy could be implemented.
The group has made up a new euphemism, “access without fear,” to soften and water down the more specific term, sanctuary city.
The panel was moderated by Gemma Smyth, the Associate Dean of Law at the University of Windsor on February 5.
Smyth believes that sanctuary cities can be extended to any municipal service.
“It’s as simple as getting a library card,” said Smyth.
“Anything a municipality is involved with funding. It really depends on the individual municipality.”
Regardless of what you call it, sanctuary city policies have proven to be expensive failures wherever implemented.
While American sanctuary city policies have come under intense scrutiny in recent years following a string of murders committed by illegal migrants who were aided by sanctuary policies, many places in Canada still champion this failed U.S. policy.
Cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Hamilton have all instituted sanctuary city policies without consulting their residents — in effect nullifying Canada’s laws by giving migrants the same right to services as tax-paying citizens and legal immigrants.
Sanctuary cities spend huge sums to provide services for people who have no legal right to be in the country.
New York City, one of the world’s largest sanctuary city, spends around $5.6 billion a year on servicing illegal immigrants.
The costs of hosting illegal immigrants in Toronto, a sanctuary city, has skyrocketed since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited the world’s migrants to come to Canada, with the federal government paying millions in taxpayer money to the city to provide more housing.
Windsor may soon be the next city to deal with the costs of providing “access without fear.”
Eight years.
That’s how much prosecutors are seeking for the woman who tried to join ISIS and later launched a terrorist attack on a Canadian Tire.
This is a significantly lower sentence than other
Rehab Dughmosh, 34, was found guilty of terrorism-related charges earlier this month.
In her own words, she was trying to “kill and hurt people” in the name of ISIS.
While Dughmosh could receive up to twelve years, prosecutors have chosen just eight.
Prosecutors are seeking a significantly lighter sentence because a court-ordered psychiatrist believes she is suffering from a mental illness.
However, Dughmosh herself disagrees with the psychiatric assessment, claiming to be both mentally sound and having no regrets.
The Crown also suggests reducing her sentence by a rate of 1.5 days per day served, which would reduce their sentence by an additional 2.5 years.
The woman, who has already been found guilty of terrorism, pledged allegiance to ISIS in a previous court appearance and has confessed to planning and executing the attack.
In 2017 Dughmosh donned a bandana with the ISIS logo at a Scarborough Canadian Tire and attacked three employees with a butchers knife and a golf club.
The three employees quickly subdued her without serious injuries.
While the employees were waiting for police to arrive they asked Dughmosh about her intentions.
“Revenge … to stop killing Muslims in Syria and Iraq. You’re killing ISIS, I’m from ISIS,” she shouted.
A year before her attack, Dughmosh had flown to Turkey and traveled across the country with the intention of crossing into Syria and joining ISIS.
Turkish authorities stopped her and sent her back to Canada after receiving a tip from the RCMP.
Despite knowing she supported ISIS and wanted to join them, the RCMP dropped her case.
A year later she executed her own ISIS-style attack on her neighbours in Scarborough.
The judge is still reviewing Dughmosh’s psychiatric assessment, her decision is expected on February 14.
Pamir Hakimzadah, 29, of Toronto, pleaded guilty to one count of leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group.
In 2014 Hakimzadah flew to Istanbul, Turkey, from Toronto. Several days later Turkish counter-terrorism police arrested him after he was reported by his taxi driver.
Turkish authorities deported him to Canada for attempting to join ISIS.
When he returned to Canada after failing to join ISIS, Hakimzadah admitted he had gone to Turkey to “fight for Allah.”
Despite returning to Canada in 2014, an investigation was not opened until 2016 when he was charged with assault and uttering threats stemming from an unrelated incident.
Last week, the former Ryerson University engineering student was finally charged — three years after the fact. He now faces up to ten years in prison.
In an agreed statement of facts, Hakimzadah admitted that he flew to Turkey with the intention of joining ISIS and fighting on their behalf.
“The purpose of Pamir’s trip was to enter Syria via Turkey. There he intended to join a terrorist group known as ISIS or Daesh,” the Crown lawyer told the court on February 1.
“He spoke either in favour of or in defence of ISIS. He viewed online ISIS content such as videos and posts.”
“He also viewed a website that provided instructions on how to get into Syria.”
Public Safety Canada guesses “about 60” people who had gone abroad to fight for ISIS have since returned to Canada, according to Public Safety Canada.
One of these people, Rehab Dughmosh, went on to launch her own ISIS-inspired attack on Canadian soil.
Like Hakimzadah, Dughmosh was ignored by RCMP until long after she was deported by Turkish Authorities.
Hakimzadah returns to court for sentencing on February 26.
Windsor, Ontario is the latest city to explore whether to make itself a “sanctuary city” and turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.
Also, Bill Blair is considering making legal gun owners store their guns at off-site facilities in the name of “safety.”
True North’s Andrew Lawton is live to talk about these stories.
Canada’s biggest problem when it comes to the national security threat posed by asylum seekers may not be stopping bad guys from entering, but making them leave.
An internal government report obtained through an access to information request from immigration lawyer Richard Kurland revealed that 11,745 illegal border crossers and asylum seekers in Canada have not yet received national security screening or vetting.
Instead, these migrants were admitted into Canada and remain in queue amidst a massive backlog that has skyrocketed since 2016.
Rather than detaining individuals and holding them at the border until proper security screening measures are completed, Canada simply releases these migrants into the community.
We rely on good faith in the hopes they’ll show up to their next appointment with border and immigration officials.
Once a migrant is in Canada, however, the record shows that even if they’re found to be inadmissible, it’s incredibly difficult to make them leave.
Take the case of Othman Ayed Hamdan — a Jordanian man who crossed into Canada from the U.S. in 2002 and filed an asylum claim. He was originally admitted, but government officials later argued that he had faked a conversion to Christianity in order to game the system and achieve refugee status.
The federal court eventually ruled against Hamdan, concluding that he was a “Christian of convenience in order to get into Canada.”
Around the same
He identified critical infrastructure that could be targeted by ISIS terrorists, and he celebrated the death of Canadian soldiers at the hands of jihadist terrorists in 2014. He called the jihadist who killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent a “hero for hitting evil Canadian forces on their soil.”
While a judge in B.C. acquitted Hamdan on terrorism charges, the Immigration and Refugee Board ruled that Hamdan was a danger to national security and was ordered deported in October 2018.
But, as reported by Global News, Hamdan is refusing to cooperate. He is “playing games” — refusing to meet with CBSA removals officers and refusing to sign the travel documents required to send this terrorist back to Jordan.
Hamdan is not the first foreign criminal to play this game.
Canada has been trying to deport a violent Rwandan asylum seeker for years.
According to a federal court decision, Jacob Damiany Lunyamila has had “approximately 389 police encounters” which “resulted in 95 criminal charges and 54 convictions.” He was deemed inadmissible to Canada for serious criminality and handed a deportation order.
But like Hamdan, Lunyamila has repeatedly refused to cooperate. He has vowed that he will never sign the required paperwork to complete his deportation order.
And so, both men remain in Canadian prisons, living off taxpayers and making a mockery of our system.
News that the government has failed to do thorough national security checks of over 10,000 asylum seekers — including individuals who entered Canada illegally and who arrived with no documentation — could lead to decades of deportation headaches for those who will eventually be found inadmissible.
If there is a lesson to learn from the above cases, it’s that we’re better safe than sorry. Once a person is allowed to enter Canada, there’s no turning back.
In 2006, after years of fighting the bureaucracy, frontline officers of the Canadian Border Services Agency finally got authorization to carry sidearms on duty after training and demonstrating their competence with the weapons.
Border agents feel they are part of law enforcement and yet, for years the bureaucracy treated them more as glorified tax collectors merely in charge of collecting duty from travellers’ purchases.
Ahmed Ressam, the so-called Millennium Bomber as well as the 9/11 terrorist attached changed all that. Well, only to a point.
CBSA officers are the first point of contact for everyone coming into the country at all Ports of Entry, including international airports. They never know what they are facing until they are face-to-face with someone.
Since 2006 every CBSA officer has been trained and qualified to carry their service weapons; all new recruits go through weapons training as part of their basic training. In 2011, the agency granted its employees authorization to carry their issued weapons — the 9mm Beretta PX4 — at all Canadian airports when on duty.
But not so fast, said Transport Canada.
Transport Canada has a myriad of regulations that control what is permissible at Canadian Class 1 airports, one of which says only ‘peace officers’ may carry weapons in our airports. The snag is that Transport Canada does not classify CBSA officers as ‘peace officers.’
What exactly they are, according to Transport Canada, is not clear.
So as a result, CBSA officers must check their weapons into gun lockers when they get to their worksites at Class 1 airports.
Yes, that’s right. We don’t trust our own border officials with weapons they are trained to use in our own airports.
A Canada-U.S. preclearance agreement was codified in law in 2016 with Bill C-23, the Preclearance Act of 2016 by the Trudeau government which exempts US officers from criminal prosecution for possessing firearms but doesn’t authorize it because of the CBSA restriction. When CBSA officers take up their pre-clearance duties at US airports they will be allowed to carry their sidearms…but not in Canada as they perform their duties.
The dispute has been going on between CBSA and Transport Canada since at least 2014. The Privy Council Office even got involved to try and mediate the bureaucratic nonsense.
The sticking point seems to be that Transport Canada has taken the position that they, not CBSA, are responsible for “safety and security of the aviation system” and therefore they are the ones who determine who is allowed to carry firearms in airports.
For their part, the Customs and Immigration Union (CIU) is frustrated. The CIU cites numerous incidents in defence of their position, including the seizure of weapons from travellers at airports.
While all Class 1 airports have armed police officers from the local jurisdictions patrolling as well as RCMP officers, they are not at the screening choke points where CBSA officers are interacting with travellers. If an incident were to occur, there would be a response lag before patrolling police officers could be there to support the CBSA officers.
Why are fully trained and equipped Canadian Border Services law enforcement officers working in Canadian airports forced to check their weapons into gun lockers?
Because in Canada, faceless bureaucrats make operational decisions for frontline officers.
Meanwhile, the most significant threat a bureaucrat faces is a paper cut.