Falling On His Sword

Mounties' top cop resigns Not enough. He has fallen on his sword for his political masters and for his officers.

In Letters: The Zaccardelli resignation

What a difference 24 hours makes in Canadian politics.

Embattled RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said today that he got his facts wrong about the Maher Arar affair when he testified at a Commons committee in September but he steadfastly refuses to resign over the matter.

Zaccardelli was back before the public safety committee to “set the record straight,” as he put it, about what he knew and when he knew it in Arar’s deportation to Syria as a suspected al-Qaida agent.

But his performance left opposition MPs howling for his resignation, and even some Conservative members expressed disbelief at his new version of events.

OTTAWA - When the Prime Minister unleashes his lapdogs to join a parliamentary pack attack, someone is about to die.

Conservative MPs treated RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli with kid gloves when he appeared before a parliamentary committee two months ago to explain his involvement in the Maher Arar affair.

They dropped the gloves and savaged him yesterday during his second appearance, when he admitted to misleading MPs due to a severely flawed memory.

It was an all-party Zach attack, and when Stephen Harper stood in the Commons a few hours later, urging patience for "due process" before anyone gets fired, well, all that's left to discuss are the terms of severance.

Notice that this has relieved the Tories of demanding he discipline and reprimand the officers who violated the law, those who subesquently he rewarded with promotions rather than sackings. And incompetence is no excuse.

Former RCMP complaints commissioner calls Zaccardelli "incompetent"

There are heads to roll but they won't since the New Law and Order Government loves its Secret Police State. No matter it is illegal and incompetent.

Canadian police said Tuesday they had told U.S. authorities they had no evidence an Ottawa software engineer was an Al Qaeda agent before Washington deported him to Syria , where he was tortured.

Yesterday, Zaccardelli, 58, said he didn't know the RCMP had given false information to U.S. authorities until the report came out in September. He had said in earlier testimony that he learned about the errors in 2002 and had briefed the appropriate ministers.

The U.S. accused Arar of links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network when authorities detained him at John F. Kennedy International Airport during a stopover on his way back to Canada from Tunisia. The investigation was ordered by former Justice Minister Anne McLellan in January 2004.

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Irony Thy Name is Zaccardelli

Ironically, Zaccardelli is the only federal official who has offered a public apology to Arar for his treatment. The government has refused to do so, pending negotiations on financial compensation.

Because the Government is full of those who called Arar a terrorist and demanded harsher, brutal treatment of him and carte blanche for the RCMP to round up more of those listed in their terrorist profile.

A teary-eyed Giuliano Zaccardelli says he's stepping down as RCMP commissioner with a clear conscience, having told the truth and done the right thing.

And the only reason Zaccardelli had crocodile tears for us today was because he was covering for those Mounties that screwed up.

More junior officers who actually conducted the investigation of Arar — and made the mistakes that led to his ordeal — continue to serve with the Mounties and in some cases have won promotion.

Zaccardelli, standing in front of a backdrop photo of charging Mounties on horseback, told a news conference that he’s resigning to help preserve public confidence in the Mounties.

We won't have confidence in the RCMP or the New Law and Order Government until there are resignations or firings of the Mounties responsible for the Arar affair, for leaking false information after the fact and for raiding an Ottawa Journalists home for having recieived the leaked information, imprisoning her illegally.

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Falling On His Sword

RCMP Terror

RCMP

Arar



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RCYA

Further proof that RCMP Commissioner 'Cover Yer Ass' Zaccardelli was an incompetent administrator who has a penchant for perjury.....as if we needed anymore proof....

Former RCMP commission Giuliano Zaccardelli told the Commons justice committee in 2004 that the forensic lab services matched the best in the world, that it had no backlog and that all cases involving violent crimes were given priority and that its clients — police forces and prosecutors were satisfied.

"Our audit found many of these claims to be incorrect," Fraser stated, adding that the most of the same problems found in the audit were raised in 1990 and 2000. "It is disappointing to find them still unresolved," she told reporters.

The auditor general said the fact is that for 99 per cent of its cases it is unable to meet its own turnaround target of 30 days, partly due to its backlog of DNA requests, which on average take 114 days to complete in 2005-06. However, when pressed, it can turn around urgent service request in 15 days, but this only happens in about one per cent of the cases.

Former RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli told a Parliamentary committee in 2004 that there was no backlog at his force's forensic services and that DNA analysis for major cases was completed within 15 days.

But a report released yesterday by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser says there is a backlog, it is growing, and fewer than one per cent of DNA samples sent to the RCMP Forensic Laboratory Services are processed in less than two weeks.

The rest, including homicides and sexual assaults languished in the lab for an average of 114 days in 2005-06, Ms. Fraser said in her report released Tuesday.

That was actually an increase of nearly three weeks over 2003-04 when additional spending and staff were directed at the labs because the force was being criticized for long turnover times and backlogs.

Ms. Fraser refused to speculate on the reasons for Mr. Zaccadelli's misleading testimony when she spoke to reporters at a news conference yesterday.

“I think you have to ask the people who made those statements. I have no explanation for that,” she said.

The suggestion that the former commissioner may have misled politicians comes after he resigned for providing false information to the government about Maher Arar who was wrongly accused of having terrorist ties. It also comes as Parliament is trying to get to the bottom of mishandling of the RCMP pension.

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Keystone Kops and Air India

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Gosh Shucks

"I also shared in that letter with (Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff) that as we had taken that particular step, I would sure appreciate if they would do the same." Day: US asked to clear Arar as security threat He forgot to add the giggle, and hayseed 'Gosh Shucks',and oh yes the pretty please. The Americans of course have no idea what he is talking about.

But what did you expect from Stockwell Day who also owes Arar an apology for having labeled him a terrorist. Still waiting for the Conservatives to apologize for believing and promoting the RCMP lies that he was a terrorist. Not just an apology as the New Government of Canada but as the Conservative Party who when in opposition smeared Arar as a terrorist.

When the then-Liberal government began belatedly, timidly asking for Arar's release from his Syrian torture chamber in the fall of 2002, opposition leader Stephen Harper was dismissive. The Liberals, he claimed, were "hitting the snooze button on security matters." His colleague, Stockwell Day, even argued the government's "lack of vigilance" had allowed a notorious terrorist like Arar to avoid detection and detention in the first place.The Arar case is not the end

And how about firing some of them RCMP bad guys. Nope not this Law and Order government. Instead they allow the RCMP commissioner to hold on to his job, and they accept that those who broke the law regarding domestic spying, a law in place years prior to 9/11, should get meritous service awards.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli testified at the Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Thursday of last week. Mr. Zaccardelli said after Mr. Arar's extraordinary rendition from New York to Syria in 2002, he was alerted to Mr. Arar's case and that he attempted to correction false information about Mr. Arar that the RCMP sent to U.S. authorities.

"I learned about it when I reviewed the information. We tried to correct it with the Americans. We let Canadian officials know about that," Mr. Zaccardelli said of the false information.

But opposition MPs said Mr. Zaccardelli's testimony was incomplete and asked if he had known that the RCMP's information was false, why he did not correct the record in Canada. It remains unclear why the RCMP and CSIS together resisted–as Justice O'Connor documents–the attempt by the minister of foreign affairs to send a letter to Syria saying that there was "no evidence" that Mr. Arar was linked to al-Qaeda. CSIS didn't want Arar returned to Canada

Yep the New Government is a Police State in the waiting. Waiting for a Majority.

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Arar

CIA



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Zaccardelli Gets The Boot?

Will the Conservatives turf RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardali, looks like they are planning to. Not over his mishandling of the Arar Affair, oh no the Harpocrites love the idea of the Security State. Nope they are dragging up an old sexual abuse case to use as an excuse to turf him. That of course is far more heinious a crime for the Tories than rendition, torture and falsifying information about Maher Arar.

RCMP whistleblowers get Day's protection

Goldring said the officers have information on a case dating back to the 1990s that the RCMP did not adequately investigate alleged sexual abuse by an ex-Mountie at a school in New Brunswick. RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli was in charge of that criminal division at the time.

MP flags concerns over Zaccardelli

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Really Corrupt Mounted Police

Gee it's hard to be a law and order government when the official state police force is riddled with corruption, cronyism and fraud.

Those who uphold the law once again act as if they are above the law.

Which suits the Harpocrites just fine since they are acting the same way.

a parliamentary committee reviews allegations of pension-fund fraud, cronyism, and three years of expense reports of former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli that were either swapped out or disappeared by his underlings, his successor, Bev Busson retires today. The planned departure comes only hours after the report of lawyer and Bay Street minence grise David Brown delivered a report on the force's corruption to Public Safety minister Stockwell Day. The RCMP, Mr. Brown declared, is "horribly broken."

Like other political police forces; the FBI and KGB for instance the RCMP have maintained their traditional para-military structure through political blackmail.

"I've worked with Liberals and Tories, and nobody wants to tangle with the RCMP," said Shirley Heafey, the former chair of the force's commission of public complaints.

"They have a lot of information on a lot of people ... It causes a chill. They have long memories in the RCMP."

And so do we on the left. We remember their infiltration of the left, their penchant for protecting strikebreakers and shooting strikers, their attack on the On to Ottawa Trekkers, their role in the Liberals attempt to discredit their opponents in particular the Quebec nationalists, their systemic refusal to deal with members of the force who abuse natives and prisoners, their role in the Arar affair and the Air India debacle, the list could go on and on.

After all the RCMP Motto is Maintain the Right.

The solution to the problem of the RCMP is three fold; implementation of the recommendations of thirty year old Macdonald Commission including; a non RCMP Commissioner, civilian control and oversight and allowing the rank and file to unionize.

Others call on Ottawa to break up the RCMP's mandate, which they believe is unwieldy. While it has many federal responsibilities whose powers range from protecting the borders against drug-smuggling, enforcing stock markets against fraud and investigating politicians, the RCMP's bread-and-butter is the contracts it has with provincial and municipal governments.

These contractual arrangements harken back to the RCMP's roots as a guns-for-hire protection and enforcement group, said Paul Palango, investigative reporter and author of The Last Guardians, a book on problems within the RCMP, calling them essentially a paramilitary force working at the behest of their hosts.

The force, he said, has turned into a hybrid organization that is both a business and a national institution.

Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

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Another Sad Day

They said they needed the Anti-Terrrorism Act to get to the truth of the Air India bombings, which would give them the right to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Canadians for information.

Well we don't need that since the Air India inquiry has exposed that the Keystone Kops are incompetent.

Red tape stymied CSIS surveillance, Air India inquiry told



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Crisis? Wot Crisis?

Saying it is so, does not make it so.

No crisis in the ranks of the RCMP: Stockwell Day

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says there's no crisis in the ranks of the RCMP despite allegations of corruption at the highest levels.

As I said here the Conservative government is trying to downplay the systemic corruption that is leading to the very public collapse of the RCMP.

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RCMP

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The Cone of Silence Bank Presidents and the RCMP

Funny but Bank Presidents sound just like the RCMP Superintendent and Commissioners when it comes to telling the truth to Parliamentary Committees.

Deputy Commissioner George, who was suspended from duty after a previous appearance before the committee, was rebuked by MPs, who said her testimony has been evasive and incomplete.

Staff Sgt. Frizzell said the pension investigation took an unexpected turn when documents were uncovered suggesting insurance funds were being diverted with Deputy Commissioner George's approval.

But he was ordered off the case before he had a chance to follow the trail, he said.

She said she had nothing to do with the winding down of the pension-fund investigation, or the issuing of a "cease and desist order" to Staff Sgt. Frizzell directing him to return to other duties.

She did not rule out the possibility that she might have seen documents related to transferring insurance funds to the pension fund.

She did not recall this, but she said she relied on advice from another senior Mountie with expertise in insurance and financial matters that there was nothing untoward with the life-insurance funds.

Back off on ABM legislation, banks warn MPs

Whenever members of the Commons committee probing ATM fees tried to peer inside the world of banking, they were met for the most part with blank expressions or no comments."We won't comment on that," said the Royal Bank's Jim Westlake, group Head, Canadian Banking, when asked about profit margins on the ATM fees.

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Gimme More Public Inquiries

The Air India public inquiry shows why we need one into recent RCMP scandals and not Government appointed inquiries.

Inquiry highlights inter-agency issues: Rae

"I think what the public is hearing, perhaps in an abrupt way, is what I think has been pretty clear to people who have studied this for a long time -- that there really was a problem of communication between different levels of government, different departments, agencies, the RCMP and CSIS," Rae told CTV's Mike Duffy Live on Friday.

With new information emerging from the inquiry, critics have wondered if race played a part in how authorities handling the case.

Asked if she thought the information Bartleman provided to the RCMP would have been treated differently if the plane was filled with whites, NDP MP Alexa McDonough said she felt it was a factor.

"I wish it weren't true. But I do think it's true," McDonough told Mike Duffy. "I also think it's shocking that as we pushed and pushed for an inquiry...they kept saying there's no need for an inquiry there's no new information there's nothing more to be learned.

"That turns out not to be true. It's an utter horror story, and thank goodness there is now a full public inquiry underway that can get to the bottom of this."

Shock, outrage and more questions

Their outrage was palpable. Family members of those killed in the Air-India disaster have been trying for more than 20 years to find out what happened at the time of the mid-air bombing.

Yesterday, they heard that days before it occurred, the RCMP brushed off information from an electronic intercept suggesting an Air-India flight had been targeted for the coming weekend.

"It's absolutely incredible," Prakash Sahu, who had a father, stepbrother and stepsister on the flight, said yesterday in an interview from Montreal. "This makes a mockery of what the RCMP were doing."

He was upset it took so long for someone to say publicly what many family members believed for so many years. He wondered why the Mounties have failed to bring those responsible for the bombings to justice. "They should have solved this long ago," he said from London, Ont.

The government resisted calls for a public inquiry for years by "hiding behind the criminal investigation," Mr. Paliwal said. He praised former Supreme Court judge John Major, who heads the inquiry. "We have a lot of confidence in him," he said.

Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

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Heil Hillier, Maintiens le droit

Military chief called period of Liberal governments a 'decade of darkness'; Liberal says Gen. Rick Hillier a `prop' for Tories

Gee I said that: Joined At The Hip

The first two people Harper met with after the election were RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli and General Hillier.

Scary that.

Consider the political role the RCMP had in the defeat of the Liberals. Releasing a press release during the campaign that said they were investigating the Liberals over alleged Income Trust leaks. Which was revealed this week, over a year later, with a inconsequential bust of a bureaucrat who profited from the Income Trust announcement but not a leak or any evidence of any kind of leak.RCMP income trust probe goes bust

Pure politics by Zaccardelli, which won him government support during the Arar affair, until he shot himself in the foot which he had already placed in his mouth.

Of course the RCMP has always been political.

They are Paramilitary Force created by the State to defend the State. That they would support a self declared Law and Order government is the essence of their slogan; Maintiens le droit.

Which my history Prof Jim Penton reminded his class meant Maintain the Right. As in the Kings Right, droit, or law, which the RCMP themselves translate as the harmless; Defending the Law. But as our Governor General Michelle Jean translated more accurately, and in the context of the Harpocrites a starkly insidious; “Upholding the Right,”

Another voice of men with guns and right wing political views was former General Lewis Mackenzie who is now an outspoken Conservative. But at least he waited till he retired to declare his allegiances to the right. Until Prime Minister Harper’s election and the brave new direction he set for Canada’s foreign and military policies, Gen. MacKenzie’s was almost a voice in the wilderness in this land.

General Hillier on the other hand is an outspoken supporter of War and of the Harper Government, because they do his bidding. Going to war in the South of Afghanistan was the first act of the New Harper Government, prior to that we had been doing peacekeeping in Kabul.

Hillier's Pro War ideology and Harpers correspond in wanting to recreate Canada's Armed Forces. By transforming them from their traditional Liberal role as Peace Keepers back into a traditional conservative Fighting Force. He began the change under the Liberals who appointed him but has mobilized his mouth in favour of Harper and War at any cost. Harpers War was originally posed to Canadians as an extension of Liberals Peace Keeping operations in Kabul. But all that changed when we joined the Americans in Kandahar.

Now we have a new Fighting Armed Forces. Complete with new recruitment ads. Gone was the tradesman/woman of the No Life Like It era, appealing to the Maritimers, the vast majority of our nations Armed Forces. Now it is a stark black and white world in the ads that show the viewer that we are fighting back.

Not only has Hillier been outspoken in public about the need to make war; the blunt-speaking Gen. Hillier has denigrated those fighting against Canadian troops in Afghanistan as "detestable murderers and scumbags." An over the top appeal to conservative law and order types. But our Armed Forces now find themselves in a situation where they face charges of attacking innocent villagers and abusing prisoners.

And Hillier has mobilized his troops to take to Canada's streets to support the war in Afghanistan.

The Red Friday Rallies began in Ottawa with Harper addressing the partisan crowd of spouses of our soldiers, Hillier was there, and the Conservatives allowed public servants time off to join the noon hour rally.

Since then Red Fridays across Canada have been small affairs notably made up of the RCMP and the Army and its conservative supporters. While ostensibly billed as supporting our troops it really is a rally to support Hillier and Harpers War.


And we remember the last time we had mass rallies of armed forces.

Men with guns being political. Scary.

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Hillier

Afghanistan

RCMP

Autocrat


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News Briefs

Or is that News Boxers? Anyhoo a few short tid bits.

Ish Theilheimer, no really that is his name, at Straight Goods wishes everyone Seasons Greetings with two posts on one page.

First One; predicting that there will be NO Federal Election in 2007. How brash of him. Being contrarian to all popular pontifications and predigitations of the pundits. Anyways his reasoning is interesting, check it out. I actually think that if it is called it won't be in the spring but the fall. The reason, Quebec provincial election.

Second One; A short precise review of the the past crimes of the RCMP that implicate more than just the Commissioner. They are rotten to the core as are their current political masters.

Straight Goods is not impressed by the un-truth-telling and subsequent resignation-when-exposed of RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli. Although it is believable that he was kept in the dark of some of his force's errors and wrongdoings, it is unlikely he was completely ignorant of everything going on. And if he was, that represents gross incompetence. (This could be called the Paul Martin dilemma. Not knowing is as bad as knowing.) The horrific Arar affair is one of many recent stains on the RCMP including:

Zaccardelli wrote a letter during the recent federal election campaign that announced an investigation into former finance minister Ralph Goodale's handling of the income trust affair. There have been no charges since or indications of wrongdoing. Gooddale was eliminated from seeking the leadership after that;

the March 1999 raid by the RCMP in which officers served a search warrant on then BC premier Glen Clark and tipped off TV local reporters. Clark lost his government after that, over what turned out to be a $12,000 backyard deck;

the RCMP received approximately $3 million in cash handed out by Liberal-friendly firms during the Adscam scandal;

politically motivated actions in support of Jean Chrétien including raids on enemies of the Prime Minister's and aggressively pepper-sprayed peaceful demonstrators during the 1997 APEC meeting;

embarrassing former prime minister Brian Mulroney over the Airbus affair and costing taxpayers more than a million dollars to cover lawsuits;

inadequate disclosure about why four members were murdered by a madman in Mayerthorpe, Alta., or the deaths of the two officers in Spiritwood, Sask., this year.

Meanwhile, the Harpocrites continually invoke a Bush-style law 'n' order campaign, including a proposal to let the police stack the judiciary. With police like this, who needs criminals?

We now return to regular programming.

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Election




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Yes or No

The Harpocrites have a hard time with simple questions. Like ones that simply need a Yes or No answer.

In Question period last May the NDP asked the Defense Minister if we were at war in Afghanistan. Yes or No. Simple right. No answer he wandered all around the issue.

This week after the revelations of the O'Connor report on Mahar Arar, Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, a simple fellow, was asked if the head of the RCMP had tendered his resignation to the Minister. Yes or No. And well you guessed it Day wandered all over the place and never answered. Tories sidestep issue of Zaccardelli's future

Of course as I said to my partner the other day the reason it's called Question Period is for the opposition to ask questions. Nothing says the government has to answer them. After all its not called Answer Period.

Meet the New Government same as the Old Government.

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CIA



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Harper Covers Up Torture

The Harper Government was forced to accept the Arar inquiry, and now that they called the Air India inquiry they realize that public inquiries about their pals in CSIS and the RCMP can lead to political embarrassment. Of course the illegal detention and torture of Canadian citizens with the complicity of the Canadian State is the real embarrassment.

Evidence at the inquiry is being heard primarily in-camera without lawyers for the three men present.

Lawyers for the government argued that only they should be present for most of the inquiry because it is only government officials whose actions are at issue.

So despite calls for a public inquiry Harper denies our right to know, he likes the idea of a Star Chamber it is his Executive prerogative after all. Clear, Transparent and Accountable to nobody but himself.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he will not impose new public-disclosure rules on an inquiry that's examining the role Canadian security agencies played in the overseas detention, interrogation and alleged torture of three Arab-Canadian men.

Harper told reporters Friday the internal inquiry, headed by retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, already has a mandate that allows him to balance the need for national security and public confidence.

"Justice Iacobucci has all the power necessary to decide whether something should be held in private or whether it can be held in public," he said. "The government has given him that mandate; the government isn't going to interfere in how he conducts the inquiry."

Iacobucci has not taken any evidence in public or released any documents since ruling in late May the inquiry will be held largely in secret.

That has left the three Canadian citizens at the heart of the inquiry, Abudllah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, deeply frustrated by their inability to participate in it.

"All I want is a fair and open process that I can be a part of, that I can help with, so that all Canadians can learn what happened," said Nureddin, who was detained for 34 days in Syria.

Nureddin says he was repeatedly tortured while being interrogated with questions that he had earlier been asked by security officials in Canada.

Almalki, an Ottawa engineer, contends he was arrested in Syria and tortured because of an incompetent CSIS and RCMP investigation that wrongly identified him as a high level al-Qaida member.

The Arar Inquiry has already revealed the RCMP sent questions for Almalki to Syrian Military Intelligence.

And it adds to Canadians disillusionment with the Justice system, which plays into the Conservatives Law and Order program.

- A recently-released government poll shows Canadians believe the rights of an accused person in the justice system trump those of the people they've committed crimes against.

SEE:

No Fly List

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

Because They Ain't White

Paranoia and the Security State

State Security Is A Secure State

Free Kadhar

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