Category: Government

This is disturbing. I haven’t bothered spouting off about this before because, while any shooting is disturbing, they tend to be more of interest to locals than anyone else. But this just got broader. A lot broader. And if you’re anything like me, you’re going to find yourself wondering just what the hell kind of clowns are in charge of security at Canada’s largest airport.

For those who haven’t heard yet, there was a shooting in downtown London, Ontario at about 3am last Saturday, October 7. The incident ended with four people, including innocent bystanders, sent to hospital with gunshot wounds but, thankfully, no fatalities. As bad as that is, it’s not the worst. It now turns out that the shooter, Ahmed Moalin-Mohamed (of NO FIXED ADDRESS, no less; remember that part) was, as the Freeps put it, “recently employed as a security guard at Pearson International Airport.”

A spokesperson with the Greater Toronto Airport Authority confirmed Moalin-Mohamed was recently employed by a private company contracted to provide security at Pearson.

He had a pass from Transport Canada allowing him access to restricted areas, said Scott Armstrong, and his duties could have included screening passengers and bags.

Why, for God’s sakes, can I never be making this shit up? The Freeps, however, being the nice little media outlet that they are, quickly move to distract from the real issue:

In another intriguing twist, police believe the weapon used to injure four men was stolen in Lansing, Mich., on Sept. 4 and smuggled across the U.S.-Canada border.

Nice, huh? Nothing like a little thinly veiled accusation flung at the Yanks to distract from the real issue, right? Nice try, bozos, but I’m not biting. The real issue is this:

Just how the hell, in a post-9/11 world, did a guy with no fixed address, a guy with “Mohamed” in his name, no less (go ahead, accuse me of profiling; I don’t give a damn), get granted access to restricted areas of an international airport?

The Lefties went apeshit again this past week (I know, I know: insert yawn here), this time over rumours that the Tories were secretly plotting to draw up a bill that would (gasp!) protect the rights of churches and marriage commissioners from having to perform same-sex marriages. Never mind that these rumours were likely started by the paranoid, fearmongering usual suspects to begin with. As long as the “standing up for people’s rights” crowd has something over which they can jump up on their little pogo sticks of indignation and hop back and forth in front of the nearest TV cameras, everything’s good in Leftyland.

And then, when things were just going so nice and indignantly, along comes Winnepeg Sun columnist Tom Broadbeck with the audacity to point out that marriage commissioners have rights too. Just because you take on a public sector job does not mean that the secular Left suddenly owns your sorry ass. They still have a choice, and yes, it is their right to make it without fear of reprisals (like getting fired).
Oh, dear. What is this world coming to?

I always love it on those rare occasions when I can open up a paper and find something in there that actually brings a smile to my mug for a change and today is one of those occasions. The Calgary Sun’s Licia Corbella had the chance to interview the PM on Friday and the resulting column came out today. It’s one of Licia’s best works yet, IMHO, and is a definite must-read. To give an idea, it starts off:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government is doing such a good job, the Liberals have to dream-up phoney Conservative bogeymen in order to attack him and his government.

and ends:

Stephen Harper not only enjoys being a player on that world stage he’s impressive and effective, too.

That makes him the biggest Liberal bogeyman of them all — only he’s not make believe.

What’s in the middle is all meat. There’s even a good belly laugh in there, too:

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is looking into an incident in which government officials discussing topics of media interest shared the name of a journalist who had made a request under the Access to Information Act. That’s an apparent violation of the Privacy Act.

“I don’t know who asks for information and I’m not sure why it would matter anyway,” says Harper. “I mean, why would I care?”

Some people would say it’s so you can punish the journalists who ask, he’s told.

“I punish them all anyway.”

And people ask me why I like that guy so much.  Read the full article here.

Well, this isn’t surprising. In their never ending quest to find some deep, dark secret in PM Stephen Harper’s closet, the MSM may have finally latched onto something that will get Canadians‘ attention, and maybe keep it, too (though I haven’t yet figured out how they’re going to put some “Bush-loving, neocon, American Republican conspiracy angle on it yet, but I’m sure they’ll think of something). CTV leads off with:

PM’s hockey loyalties questioned after Leafs goal

Updated Thu. Oct. 5 2006 11:46 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Hockey fans are wondering if Prime Minister Stephen Harper unwittingly outed himself as a closet Toronto Maple Leafs fan with his reaction to the team’s lone goal Wednesday night.

Harper, a hard-core hockey fan, has been careful to keep his allegiances to himself.

But that hasn’t prevented hockey fans from speculating whether the Toronto-born Harper, who studied in Calgary and now lives at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, has any favourites only his inner circle knows about.

So there you have it. A far-right wing, nutjob, knuckle-dragging, homophobic, neanderthal, gun-toting, redneck Evangelical troglodyte is one thing, but are Canadians ready for a PM that’s a Leafs fan?

EEK.

There isn’t much in the world that I consider to be beneath them but this is monumentally idiotic, even for the Grits. It seems that the idea of being accountable for how they blow our tax dollars is so foreign to the McSquinty Fiberals that they don’t even know how to respond properly when asked about it.

When quizzed on just how much of our money (yes, Dolton, OUR goddamned money) is being blown on the Caledonia fiasco is going to cost Ontario taxpayers when all the wishy-washy fiddledyfriggery is done with, it seems that the best answer that they can come up with is that it’ll “cost what it’s going to cost.”

I couldn’t make this bullshit up if I tried. This politically correct, mollycoddling clusterpluck (you all know what I meant to type) has been going on for over seven months now and we are the ones on the hook for the bill! That includes paying the cops, buying the land and oh, don’t forget the 300 grand for “negotiator” Jane Stewart’s salary. Yeah, you read that right. But according to David Ramsay (minister responsible for aboriginal affairs), the Ministry of Bullshit has “no idea” how much the occupation is costing.

Ramsay did get one thing right, though. Yes, a Fiberal got something right. It was this:

“When you’re confronted with a situation, it’s the government’s responsibility to deal with it.”

So START DEALING WITH IT, YOU GODDAMNED INVERTEBRATES!!

For the benefit of anybody who was wondering just why the CCP had to go under the axe, the National Post had the answer on page A16 of their September 8th edition in an article by Lorne Gunter. Despite all the howling that will arise from the left at the news of its demise, the fact remains that the CCP was more like the CCCP than Canada…

Kill the Court Challenges Program
National Post
Fri 08 Sep 2006
Page: A16
Section: Editorials
Byline: Lorne Gunter

The Conservative government is considering axing the Court Challenges Program (CCP). Good. The sooner the better.

Most Canadians have probably never heard of the CCP. And it’s budget is only a little under $3-million a year. Yet no other federal program or law has done more damage to Canadian democracy. No other has so fundamentally altered Canadian society without recourse to Parliament.

The CCP has since 1985 funded dozens of high-profile court cases challenging the validity of federal and provincial laws in the name of feminism, gay rights, visible minorities, refugees, prisoners and the criminally accused.

Although its funding comes entirely from taxpayers, the CCP was hijacked early on by leftist cause-pleaders at odds with the broad Canadian public on such issues as gay marriage, prisoner voting, detention of criminals and a Criminal Code prohibition on spanking children, abortion on demand, rape shield, immigration rights, prohibitions on free speech in the name of protecting minority sensibilities and the entire grab bag of fashionable causes that fall under the heading of “political correctness.”

CCP-funded groups have achieved through the courts new rights and laws they would never have been able to win democratically.

In that way, the CCP is fundamentally anti-democratic.

Ian Brodie — who is now Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Chief of Staff and part of the decision-making on CCP’s budget — was once a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario. He specialized in political influence on the courts.

In a book he wrote during this earlier career, called Friends of the Court, Mr. Brodie outlined how CCP administrators had aggressively “created networks of interest groups and encouraged new groups to pursue public interest legislation.” They doled out millions to radical organizations and urged them to start Charter challenges that targeted traditional Canadian values and laws.

“Over time,” Brodie reported, CCP managers and their interest group friends became so chummy that “these networks of groups became increasingly involved in running the program.” In effect, the organizations that stood to benefit most from the program — both in terms of funding and court decisions that sided with their causes — gained inordinate control over it.

After 1993, when the Liberals returned to power, special interests were put in charge, and their funding decisions made secret.

Not only did left-leaning interest groups want to keep CCP cash flowing into their legal departments, they understood that if they controlled the CCP granting process, they could keep groups opposed to their viewpoints from receiving equal funding, thereby giving their own causes an unfair advantage in court.

Over time, the CCP and its fundees have become a very cozy, close-knit little clan. The program almost never funds cases brought by individuals, only those supported by powerful rights-seeking lobbies, and almost always the same dozen or so lobbies.

Upwards of 15% of the program’s budget goes to finding litigants who are willing to launch cases against federal and provincial government statutes opposed by the interest groups whose directors effectively run the CCP.

One Toronto feminist lawyer, a founder of LEAF, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund — which is CCP’s largest recipient — is frequently funded by CCP to represent other beneficiaries, such as the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. She has also used herself as a test case. In the early 1990s, she went to court to overturn Canadian tax laws on childcare expenses and was represented by another LEAF lawyer who was paid in part by the CCP.

Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff, two University of Calgary political scientists, wrote in their book The Charter Revolution, that the CCP also “played a lead role” in the formation of the Canadian Prisoners’ Rights Network, the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, the Working Group on Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, and the Equality Rights Committee of the Canadian Ethno-cultural Council.

The CCP was even the principal funder in 1992’s Schacter case, in which CCP-paid intervenors convinced Supreme Court judges to grant themselves “reading in” powers to create new rights in Canadian law where none were approved by Parliament or the legislatures. Not coincidentally, it is special interest litigators whose cases are underwritten by CCP who have been the principal beneficiaries of this new judicial muscle to create rights out of thin air.

The CCP, with its biases and secret agendas, has no place in a pluralistic society. Ottawa should turn off its tap.