Statistics Canada data shows that every province except Manitoba and Quebec saw a decline in the number of police officers.
According to the organization’s Police personnel and expenditures in Canada, 2022 data police strength across Canada declined in comparison to last year.
“As of May 15, 2022 there were 70,566 police officers in Canada, 406 more than in 2021. This represents a rate of police strength of 181 officers per 100,000 population, a decrease from 2021.”
Broken down even further, every province saw their police forces decline by up to 3%.
British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island had the largest decline, reporting a 3% drop in the number of police officers since 2021.
Ontario and New Brunswick followed with a 2% decline, while Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland had their police forces decline by 1%.
Quebec and Manitoba did not see a decline in police.
Following the Black Lives Movement protests in 2020, major cities like Toronto and Vancouver saw calls to defund the police.
Since then, metropolitan areas have seen a spike in random violence with recent fatal stabbings making headlines across the country.
A violent knife attack, which resulted in a passenger getting his throat slashed, is being investigated as an ISIS terrorist attack by the RCMP.
Abdul Aziz Kawam was arrested on Saturday after allegedly attacking a man while on a bus travelling on Fraser Highway at 9:30 a.m. Police say Kawam held a knife to the throat of another individual at a bus stop four blocks away.
The injured victim is in stable condition in hospital.
Kawam was initially charged with one charge of attempted murder, two of assault with a weapon and one of possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
On Monday, investigators with the Metro Vancouver Transit Police reached out to the RCMP-led Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) due to disturbing comments allegedly made by Kawam.
Kawam allegedly made statements about having conducted the attack for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).
“During the course of our investigation, it was determined that the suspect made quite a few concerning statements, which is why we notified the RCMP INSET,” Const. Amanda Steed of Metro Vancouver Transit Police said.
“So they have taken on an investigation as well. And we’re working with them. But from here on, they will be in charge of the investigation and they have forwarded their own charges along with ours.”
After RCMP national security investigators took over the investigation, prosecutors added four counts of terrorism on Monday.
RCMP Supt. David Teboul said INSET is working with Metro Vancouver Transit Police on the case.
“We remain committed to uncovering all the facts relating to this disturbing and unprovoked assault.”
A British Columbia school board has quietly issued a “no trespass order” to a former school trustee candidate only months after she ran on a pro-parents ticket.
Jewlie Rose Milligan could face arrest if she violates the order which bars her from appearing on school properties, attending school board meetings or contacting school trustees or staff in Vernon, BC.
“I have grandkids and I would like to be involved in schools. (The order) has limited me to where I can go and what I can do. It’s taken away my freedoms,” Milligan told True North.
“I actually called the police to see and they said that the no trespass order would be enforced.”
Milligan claims that the order stems from her delivering a “notice of liability” written by the group Action4Canada to school officials over the teaching of sexually explicit content to children in BC schools.
“There’s not threats in it. It just states the fact that if this is happening, it could be a criminal offence and if you are complicit with it, you are liable,” said Milligan.
The validity of “notices of liability” have been disputed by legal experts.
Milligan ran in the 2022 municipal election under the ParentsVoice BC banner, landing in eighth place.
According to Milligan, a police officer showed up at her home to deliver her the no trespassing order.
“An RCMP officer came to my door and delivered the no trespass order to my mom,” said Milligan.
“I wrote a response and I asked for it to be rescinded and an apology because there was no substantiation. I also asked them to provide details of the incident they were alleging I did, which of course they did not do.”
School District 22’s order claims that Milligan also “intimidated” staff and trustees – an allegation which Milligan denies.
“You have sent threatening and intimidating letters to our staff accusing them of criminal and other unlawful conduct,” the order claimed.
“You have attended a board meeting and again engaged in intimidating conduct toward our staff via registered mail and delivery at the school board office.”
Some school boards in BC have taken extraordinary measures in response to a wave of parents upset that sexually explicit and gender ideology content was being made available to children.
A series of tense stand offs at the Chilliwack School District led to trustees requiring parents who wish to attend school board meetings to have their photo ID and personally identifying information collected.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she has “confidence” in Elections Alberta’s plan to use tabulators for the advanced vote in the upcoming provincial election because a recount will be possible if necessary.
Her comments come after a group of motivated voters retained legal counsel, which argued last week that use of the tabulators would reduce election integrity.
But, Smith says Elections Alberta will preserve all paper ballots in case a recount is requested.
“I have confidence that because we have the ability to do a hand count as a follow up in the event there are close results, I believe that’s going to be sufficient,” Smith told True North in an unrelated press conference on Monday.
“That’s, I think, something that people expect in democracy – that you should be able to verify a vote if results end up very close.”
I asked Premier Smith for her thoughts on electronic tabulators being used for the advanced polls in the upcoming provincial vote. Smith said the paper ballots will be kept in case a recount is required.
Smith says jurisdictions elsewhere, like in the US, ran into issues when paper ballots were counted by a tabulator and not preserved after a vote.
Elections Alberta confirmed to True North that it will use electronic tabulators for the advanced vote in the upcoming provincial election. The agency said it will preserve all paper ballots, including those counted by tabulators, for three months following the date of the election or the date of a recount, as stipulated under the Election Act.
Last week, Alberta litigator Leighton Grey of Grey Wowk Spencer LLP sent a letter to Elections Alberta saying he represents many residents who don’t want electronic voting machines used.
Grey said the intention of the letter is to ensure that Elections Alberta intends to hand count the ballots and to keep all ballots for three months following election day.
“We want to make sure because this is really important… and we’re concerned that the result that comes out of it is accurate and correct and done according to law,” he told True North.
Grey said that Rachel Notley’s government changed regulations in 2017 to allow for electronic tabulators. He said such machines were used in the Calgary municipal election.
In his letter, Grey argued that electronic voting machines reduced confidence in the Calgary Municipal elections. He also said the results could not be appealed because the ballots were machine counted and then immediately destroyed.
Elections Alberta said it can’t speak to elections in other jurisdictions, but added, “the preservation of ballots and all election documents is clearly stipulated in the act, which we are mandated to uphold.”
The agency also said it offers a Vote Anywhere Service, meaning electors anywhere in the province can show up at any voting place and receive a ballot for their electoral division.
“With 87 electoral divisions, tabulators are an essential component to how we manage all those different ballots as the alternative would require sorting and transporting hundreds of thousands of ballots prior to the count,” a spokesperson told True North.
The agency says tabulators are an essential part of how it delivers the vote, and without them, it would need to sort hundreds of thousands ballots into electoral divisions before counting.
“In 2019, all of the vote anywhere ballots were counted by a tabulator, but it was done at a centralized location and delayed the full unofficial results by several days,” the agency continued.
Justin Trudeau has decided to ram the government’s online censorship bill through parliament and forcibly shut down debate. If you don’t laugh, you might just cry. Especially when you realize just how insidious this piece of legislation really is. Bill C-11 will give the CRTC, a government regulatory body, the authority to regulate your online social media activity as if you were a broadcaster.
After ruining the internet for all us, in typical fashion, Trudeau views this as the perfect time to start his own side-hustle as a YouTuber himself. Now unlike you and True North, Trudeau will be able to artificially boost his content and force all of us to watch it. How convenient!
Tune in to the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner.
Prominent African-American scholar Dr. Carol Swain says she believes it is “totally appropriate” for white professors to use the “N-word” in academic contexts.
This comes amid multiple controversies at Canadian post-secondary institutions involving white professors and lecturers being cancelled for using the word in class as part of their curricula.
Prominent African-American scholar Dr. @carolmswain told me she believes it is totally appropriate for white university & college professors to use the “N-word” in academic contexts. pic.twitter.com/0jCKKVbCQb
“I think it’s totally appropriate,” said Swain in an interview with True North. “Where you have free speech, I would hope that people would be able to use that (word).”
Swain says the “N-word” has evolved to have several meanings, and continues to be frequently used by black people.
She also previously wrote in a column for Arizona Daily Independent that it’s “impossible to teach African American history without dissecting the N-word and its complexity within and outside the black community.”
Swain told True North, “anyone can be cancelled over anything these days,” but she would hope that “a teacher who’s been teaching a subject for many many decades would not lose their job just because they don’t conform to what the latest politically correct standards are.”
The debate over the use of the “N-Word” in academic settings rose to prominence in Canada in the fall of 2020 after University of Ottawa professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval was suspended for using the word in her Art and Gender class while explaining how certain marginalized groups have reclaimed slurs.
The white professor’s use of the word caused fury among students and left-wing activists, who rallied for her to be disciplined. Lieutenant-Duval says she was also doxxed by a disgruntled student. Her treatment was condemned by several politicians and scholars.
Meanwhile, a senior City of Markham human resources employee was placed on leave last month after she said and displayed the “N-word” in a presentation to George Brown College students.
CBC News reported that the lecturer was providing students with a real-world case study of two firefighters losing their jobs over offensive social media posts, and quoted one of the posts which contained the “N-word”. The latter led to students being triggered.
Following the incident, the college president offered students trauma counselling and told them they could file a human rights complaint.
Some guest speaker at George Brown College used the N-word in a presentation. So the college president (who formerly ran @BrockUniversity during its own descent into woke madness) is offering students counselling for presumed trauma, & urging them to file human rights complaints pic.twitter.com/iVYBTkMmSM
Swain told True North she finds the cancelling of white professors and lecturers over their use of the “N-word” in an academic context to be “horrible,” adding that she feels reactions from woke students are knee-jerk.
“It’s the most hurtful word in the universe, yet it’s okay if black people use the word?”
Dr. Carol Swain is a former political science and law professor at Vanderbilt University and a former politics and public policy associate professor at Princeton University. She has become known in the United States for her vocal opposition to the Black Lives Matter organization and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda.
True North’s full interview with her will be released later this week.
Alberta energy grid data shows that wind and solar power production fell sharply to a mere 29 megawatts in the early hours of Monday, or less than 1% of their total energy capacity.
As reported by the outlet Pipeline Online, the Alberta Electric System Operator’s minute-by-minute data on energy generation output shows how less than an hour past midnight wind power tanked to 29 MW while solar produced 0 MW.
Alberta wind farms have the ability to produce 3,618 megawatts at capacity – meaning that less than 0.8% of that limit was achieved.
Similarly, in February, wind power in Alberta tanked to an average between 11 and 20 megawatts, or 0.3% of their capacity due to extreme cold weather. Wind turbines automatically shut off when the weather gets too cold.
“At this point, the business case behind using solar and wind power is often very weak because these two sources of power are often unreliable – the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow,” president of SecondStreet.org Colin Craig told True North.
Saskatchewan’s energy regulator SaskPower is currently seeking to expand the province’s renewable energy capacity by 3,000 MW in solar and wind projects.
According to Craig, the province should look into having closer ties with its neighbour Manitoba which has a plentiful source of hydroelectric power.
“If the Saskatchewan government’ is looking at solar and wind power to reduce emissions, then building more ties with Manitoba might make sense as the latter has access to relatively clean hydro power,” said Craig.
“Alternatively, small modular nuclear reactors are another exciting clean energy source that’s coming on stream. Perhaps there are ways the Sask government could cut red tape to help speed development of the latter up?”
Toronto is rife with crime and its downtown — still endeavouring to recover from the impact of the longest Covid lockdown in North America — has become a haven for drug addicts.
The ill-advised drug policies pushed by the leftists on city council and Toronto public health have plunked “safe injection sites” throughout the downtown core and similar drug-enabling sites in homeless shelters.
Yet that apparently is not enough.
Instead of recognizing that their drug policies have been a colossal failure – in fact, fatal drug overdoses keep increasing – in typical fashion, the city’s leftist enablers and drug industry activists have decided to double down with a request to the feds to decriminalize hard drugs, even for youth ages 12-17.
The Toronto public health request, dated March 24 and signed by medical officer of health Eileen de Villa and the new chief of police Myron Demkiw, has been forwarded to Carolyn Bennett, federal minister of health and addictions.
Bennett is my MP and judging from what we’ve seen in our midtown Toronto riding, she is long on woke policies and very short on actually understanding (or caring to understand) the impact of her decisions.
I would guess that while in Toronto she doesn’t venture much beyond her protected midtown neighbourhood bubble and has chosen to remain completely insulated from the harmful impacts of Toronto’s drug policies.
The justification for the Toronto public health request is nothing short of ridiculous and based on limited evidence or metrics, if any at all.
The submission claims decriminalization will reduce the “stigma and discrimination” against users and make it easier for them to ask for and “access a range of health and social supports.”
“Without a criminal record, it will be easier for people who use drugs to find a job and a safe place to live,” the submission says.
“Possessing drugs for personal use does not directly cause harm to others.”
Let’s stop right there. The people who wrote this sound high themselves.
In what world would an employer want to hire a junkie?
Finding a safe place to live is dependent on having a job and money.
It’s clear the addicts I’ve observed on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver are using all the money they can get their hands on for their next fix.
In other words, these cities don’t have a homeless problem – they have a drug problem.
When addicts don’t have money, they turn to crime and if they’re being arrested, it’s for vandalism, theft, assault and other activities they engage in to get quick cash.
This brings me to the criminality that accompanies addiction.
In Toronto, the consensus from those living in the vicinity of safe injection sites has been that lawlessness, dirty needles, prostitution (to obtain drug money) and the presence of drug dealers increased exponentially once a site opened.
Dirty needles have been left on school playgrounds near the safe injection sites and drugged out users, who have no boundaries while under the influence, have been said to harass small children as they attempt to go to school.
The idea, according to the Toronto public health submission, that decriminalization will be accompanied by a “full continuum of downstream mental health, harm reduction and treatment services” is simply ludicrous.
Since the trendy safe injection sites – which give addicts their drugs but “safely” – opened first in Vancouver and subsequently in Toronto, they’ve merely provided a turnstile of safe injections to addicts, turning them out on the street to roam Toronto’s neighbourhoods until their next safe fix.
I spent many days prior to the pandemic observing and writing about the ill effects of “harm reduction sites” on surrounding neighbourhoods.
Like in Vancouver, which started the trend, there has been very little rehab attached to harm reduction or enforcement.
In both Toronto and Vancouver, there appears to be a zone around them which is impenetrable to police – a zone where dealers are allowed to sell their hard drugs with no issue.
On a recent trip to Eastside Vancouver, I witnessed blocks upon blocks of addicts camped on public sidewalks drugged out, urinating and defecating at will and frozen in the classic pose of a fentanyl addict (similar to a candy cane).
It was alternately sad and obscene that the powers that be have allowed it to become such a Dante’s Inferno.
The absolute failure of the policy was staring me in the face.
One afternoon, I stood down the street from a safe injection site on Toronto’s Dundas St. E., watching two drug dealers ply their trade from inside a bus shelter.
On another recent afternoon, I observed a drug dealer turning up at a hotel shelter down the same street with a bag full of goodies, right beside a drug addict frozen in the fentanyl pose.
Whatever those who populate what has become a drug industry of enablers might say, the idea of decriminalizing all manner of hard drugs is simply foolish and does not bode well for Toronto’s future.
Yet it seems DeVilla and the drug industry activists who support her will not be content until they transform an already declining city into a complete s—-hole.
It didn’t take long for the blame finger to be pointed, as advocates began claiming the death of eight migrants who drowned in a St. Lawrence River smuggling mishap off Cornwall Island was a direct result of the Roxham Road unregulated border crossing being shut down.
“It’s tough not to associate this with what happened at Roxham Road and the new Safe Third Country Agreement, and the overall sentiment that’s been pushed forward with all these agreements and talks,” Abdulla Daoud, director of the Montreal-based Refugee Centre, told the Montreal Gazette.
“After what happened last week, the sentiment that we are projecting to asylum-seeking communities is that Canada is no longer accepting people.”
Unfortunately, that is not true since there is nothing new about human smugglers using Cornwall Island as a jump-off point.
In fact, it’s a hot spot for human smuggling, with police making 48 separate interceptions involving 80 people trying to enter the United States illegally since January.
It’s just not something the police want to make public.
The Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, best known as a major centre for moving contraband tobacco, sits on Cornwall Island where it straddles the Canada-U. S. border, and has territory in Quebec, Ontario and New York State.
It would seem the perfect smuggling spot. The only criminal access to Quebec. Ontario and the U.S. is via water.
During the summer, therefore, high-powered Jon boats race the waters around Cornwall Island, smuggling cut-rag tobacco into Quebec in the dead of night.
In the winter, it’s snowmachines pulling sleds.
The bodies of eight migrants have been pulled from the St. Lawrence River in the Quebec section of Akwesasne while a 30-year-old man described by friends and family as a local human smuggler remains missing.
Police identified two of the Romanian migrants as 28-year-old Cristina (Monalisa) Zenaida Iordache and 28-year-old Florin Iordache, who was carrying Canadian passports for two young children under the age of three who were among the victims.
The identities of four Indian nationals have been tentatively identified from Indian sources as Praveen Chaudhary, 50, his wife Diksha, 45, Meet, 20, and daughter Vidhi, 24.
And as the latest numbers indicate, this should cause concern and merit closer intelligence, especially since Quebec’s Roxham Road has been officially shut down since U.S. President Joe Biden recently visited Ottawa.
During the time, this unsanctioned border crossing was being played, some 40,000 “unregulated refugees’ crossed into Canada via the United States.
The victims in Akwesasne, however, were attempting to enter the United States from Canada, said Lee-Ann O’Brien, deputy chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service.
The missing man, Casey Oakes, was last seen boarding a small, light-blue boat at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, wearing a black vest, black face mask and black toque, according to a press release from Akwesasne police.
Joe Oakes, the man’s great-uncle, said his nephew was “probably bringing those guys across,” referring to the people whose bodies were found.
Oakes said his nephew made this kind of trip often – once every week or every other week – carrying migrants from Canada to the U.S. for money, as do others in the community. He said there was bad weather on Wednesday night, when Casey boarded his brother’s boat. “They know the river, but he probably just couldn’t handle it that night,” he said.
In April 2022, six Indian nationals were rescued from a sinking boat in the St. Regis River, which runs through a Quebec portion of Akwesasne.
A seventh person, spotted leaving the vessel and wading ashore, was later identified as a U.S. citizen.
In February, local island police had reported an increase in human smuggling via the Mohawk territory.
“The nature of human smuggling and recent weather conditions have resulted in our first responders being put at risk when completing life-saving events,” the police force said in a news release back then.
Beyond the Akwesasne Mohawk Police, there is no full-time police presence in the Ontario and Quebec portion of the territory.
“In the past few days, immigrants have required transportation to the hospital, which not only is a concern for their health, but also reduces our own ambulance availability in Akwesasne.”
Located off-island is the Cornwall Regional Task Force (CRTF), a joint operation representing the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Cornwall Police Service, the OPP and the Ontario Ministry of Finance.
Its job is to enforce the law along Cornwall Island’s regulated and unregulated borders, gather intelligence, interdict smuggling operations, and conduct investigations into the illicit flow of black-market tobacco.
The focus now as the ice moves out will be the high-powered Jon boats driven by men wearing black, and smuggling cut-rag tobacco into Canada for illicit cigarette manufacturers in Quebec and Ontario.
And human smuggling too, of course, which is always there — with potential refugees often seen roaming the streets seeking passage out.
Vancouver police are investigating alleged assaults that took place at a trans-visibility rally on Friday.
The Vancouver Police Department said in a news release on Saturday that it had assigned detectives to review video, eyewitness accounts, and victim statements from two confrontations that took place between rally-goers and counter-protesters in Grandview Park during International Transgender Day of Visibility.
“The incidents occurred when rally-goers confronted a group of counter-protesters inside Grandview Park, where between 75 and 100 people had gathered,” the statement from Vancouver Police Department (VPD) said.
“Police believe at least two people were assaulted.”
VPD released two videos of the incidents, one involving activist Billboard Chris – a man protesting the expansion of transgender-related school curriculum and medical procedures across North America.
Another angle of the assault on me today. Police did nothing.
The investigating officer says I instigated, and she told me it was a mutual fight. pic.twitter.com/rCQZyntjSY
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) April 1, 2023
Billboard Chris, whose name is Chris Elston, claimed on social media that the videos show him being assaulted. Elston has threatened to take legal action against the VPD, saying the police did nothing to protect him.
This was my first assault. I’d been there for seconds. It left me with a bloody nose.
My friend @pierre_barns was on his own with some hostile people, so I went to give him support and actually move us away from these insane people. pic.twitter.com/Bt9cO7poi0
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) April 1, 2023
