“It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right, and to act now,” McGuinty said.

Wow! I am starting to feel better already!

All I see from this recent announcement is a hidden delay in any future commitment to protect the boreal forest with a token appeal to the aboriginal population tossed into the mix. I find it despicable that he would use the recent environmental fad as his main talking point:

The Ontario government says protecting this region is key to its plan to fight climate change. The forests and peat lands in the Far North store about 97 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and absorb around 12.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the government said.

If I owned the boreal forest, I would aim to protect it for its own sake not for the sake of protecting the world from climate change. That is why I think this is just smoke and mirrors again from a Liberal government. It sounds to me like new logging and mining contracts are in the works and the government has to lessen the blow:

Mining generated about $11 billion in Ontario in 2007, and McGuinty said he was confident the consultations on the new protected area of the forest won’t cause any damage to the growing sector.

“We don’t want to compromise that, but we do want to ensure that our mining efforts in the province of Ontario are respectful of Ontarians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.”

I think Gord is right:

The troubling part of the story as I first heard it is that it will take 10+ years to map out what area is to be declared off-limits. For the industries this is bad because it throws an incredible amount of uncertainty into their future planning.
—SNIP—
The idea is good. And admittedly discernment is needed to determine which areas to preserve. But 10 years is too long. Too long to wait, too much uncertainty.

Yes, that delay is troubling. However, the cynic in me says those ten years are long enough to sneak in government favoritism before these hypothetical future restrictions come into effect — sneak in contracts that would not bode well with the landowners nor with the public.

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I’m glad to see the Liberals are going to the fringes again with their plans (Ontario Health Minister and notoriously dogmatic homosexual activist George Smitherman bragged about how this would only affect about a dozen people per year) since it will allow us Conservatives the opportunity to point out the folly to a health care system which on paper is completely financed by the government but in reality is only as good as the government decides to make it. On the provincial level, it would be hard for Dalton McGuinty to justify how he can allow thousands in the province to go through life with debilitating back pains or limited eye sight but hey, at least Fred is happy with that new figure we bought him when we dressed him up and called him Sally! Well, at least it would be if there was actually an opponent out there who wasn’t a complete pushover or leading a party with even less hope of winning the top prize than the Leafs.

All of which makes one happy to see our national government contains MPs who are willing to go to bat for us average Ontarians whose self-esteem issues are generally limited to the names our parents gave us and foregoing extremely expensive cosmetic surgeries for a shopping trip on the weekend. It’s nice to know that somebody out there still get the notion that “public” health care is supposed to cover more than one out of every one million people in this province!

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It’s not the concept of rights that conservatives like myself hate; in fact, the United States — a country many of us neo-cons look to favorably — had natural rights embedded in its system far earlier in that country’s history. Rather, what bothers us the most with our rights is that they are so ambiguous and mailable; so much to the point that the courts could actually use the wording of the Charter’s introduction to justify locking up all Italian-Canadians…or rule just about any other reality into being just by a pronouncement. What good are rights if you can’t be certain that they won’t be written out of the Constitution 20 years from now when social culture shifts a tad, or, as today’s ruling demonstrates, the justice system we all depend on for stability is no longer in vogue over on the real estate west of Parliament Hill?

The credibility of today’s ruling isn’t also helped by the strong dissenting opinion of four of the court’s nine sovereigns. Strong language was used by Justice Rothstein in writing on the dissenting opinion, giving hope that this ruling could be overturned with a modest change in the line-up of court judges. Again, even the most partisan individual has to acknowledge that possibility and by extension, that rights are only as good as the ideologues in high courts who defend them!

Unfortunately, any change that may come down the road won’t come soon enough for the victims of violent crimes, or their families, who go on to see their perpetrators go on to receive a Happy Meal sentence, even when the crimes they commit are anything but a “diminished moral blameworthiness” act, as the court would have you believe!

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I’m sorry that they feel that their people got a raw deal from Confederation and in a perfect world, yes, the treaties negotiated over a hundred years ago (and gifts for that matter) were done in bad faith, but a Native today has no more right to rule over this land than an immigrant, a native-born Euro-Canadian or anyone else for that matter. Canada is a U.N.-recognized, politically sovereign entity which calls the shots in its territory. In all fairness, what have any of these mobsters or terrorists now crying crocodile tears done to deserve the very generous tax exemptions, government programs and hand-outs that they get besides winning the genetic lottery? Have all of those perks been considered by these people or should we subtract all of the tax money behind them from the total we are to pay this band for the Grand River territory (IF we even owe it to them post-negotiations!), because it might just turn out that the Natives owe us a nice big fat cheque along with the apology!

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Considering the comments in the “Straight Talk Thread“, and what we already know is happening on the reserves, who do you think has a better perspective on this important issue?

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The man’s brother, Joe, told CHCH-TV that more than three individuals attacked Gualtieri and that his nephew saw a native protester hitting him over the head with what may have been an oak railing.

“It was held with two hands when when the one nephew found (Gualtieri) unconscious, the individual had just finished striking him again,”_Joe Gualtieri told CHCH-TV. “Standing on top of him, almost crouched down, beating him over the head - when he was already unconscious.”

One can almost hear the leftist bloggers explaining that Gualtieri invited being beaten almost to death for the offense of interfering in a “first nation” protest. Such is life in the apartheid state of Ontario.

Update: “I believe that my brother was one strike away from being killed.”

Gualtieri, evil post-colonialist that he is, was building a house for his daughter. If that’s not a good reason to repeatedly smash someone across the head with an oak railing after he’s been knocked unconscious, then I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, local natives are testifying to the fine and admirable character of the young lads who came close to beating Gualtieri to death. Despite that everyone knows who the natives are, OPP officers on hand have no clue who to arrest for the attempted murder. Perhaps because no crime has been committed: Allow me to welcome you once again to life in the Apartheid State of Ontario.

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Of the southern Alberta communities included in the data, the Piikani Nation had the most lone-parent families at 58.8 per cent and the Blood Reserve was close behind at 55.4 per cent.

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Barack Obama wins standing ovations from liberal Democrats by pledging to double foreign aid. Thus, under President Obama, the U.S. government will borrow from China and Japan $50 billion each year to subsidize regimes in Africa, putting our kids in hock forever, so we can feel good about ourselves.

Meanwhile, soft-headed Canadians are urging the Canadian government to pass out more blank cheques with which African dictators will purchase additional assault rifles and to sign a silly international treaty that will obligate the government to add billions more to the Indian Enrichment Project kitty.

Not that the government is much better. Hundred of millions spent on…what? Equipment purchased for the purpose of continuing to pretend to solve tribal disputes in desert wastelands half-way across the world? And then a couple million more to fund the compassionate enterprises of mid-eastern terrorists.

That’s okay. I feel fantastic about myself.

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A better way to deal with the illegal segment of the tobacco market, we think, might be - dare we suggest it - to enforce the law…As long as governments quiver in terror at the suggestions that natives, or more precisely some natives who profit from this trade, might react badly if required to pay the normal taxes, then the taxes will not be paid.

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The 358 members of the Tsawwassen First Nation head to the polls Wednesday to decide whether to ratify B.C.’s first urban treaty, a process 14 years in the making.

If the members vote to ratify the treaty, they will get $40 million, a share of the Fraser River salmon catch and 372 hectares of Crown land south of Vancouver near the mouth of the Fraser River

Sooooo, 40 million divided by 358 is $ 111,731.00 per member. And that doesn’t even take into account the ongoing value of the salmon fishery and prime lower mainland real estate. Not bad work if you can get it.

Oh, sorry, did I say “work”?

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I don’t question for a second that in the past, parts of Canada’s government have acted contrary to the best interests of many special interests - we can talk about Italians, Chinese, Aboriginals, Dukhobours, Metis, Japanese, Sikhs, the list goes on. Many of these groups, in recent years, have sought reparations for the wrongs done to them in the past. At those various times, there were people who were individually responsible for the actions of government. Sadly some of them were never held accountable for these actions in their lifetime. Others remain alive today. Let me say right now, those individuals responsible for any and all of these actions deserve to be tried and convicted of any laws that were broken.

But the fact is, no government is perfect - government is made up of humans, self-interested humans, who make mistakes, make oversights, and sometimes even make patently wrong decisions - sometimes with noble reason, sometimes with ignoble ones. I maintain a common concept in law in Canada, the United States, and perhaps even in much of the western world is the concept of limited liability. We all want to blame someone for our problems. Sometimes the problems we face today are because of injustices in the past. Sometimes those injustices occurred to our forefathers, but their continued effect continues to this day. However, at some point, a reasonable line has to be drawn between who we can hold legally responsible for our plight and who we cannot.

Let me tell you a story about a poor man in his 50’s. He is addicted to drugs on the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. He has never held a steady job, and he has committed crimes to support his drug habit. People ask him why he is where he is. He points back in time to when he first encountered drugs, how he had low self-esteem. He points back to his lack of focus in school and how the teacher would beat him and ridicule him in class, in an effort to get him to do better. He points back to a sick janitor he encountered who fondled him while he was showering after gym class.

Who is to blame for this? He could blame:

• The teachers who physically and emotionally abused him
• The janitor who fondled him
• The administration of the school for hiring the janitor and the teacher, and for holding to school rules that permitted “the strap”.
• The school board who administrates the schools in the area
• The government who administrates the school boards

No question, such abuse is bad. It damages people for life. Someone is to blame. Who? If we use the concept of limited liability as a guide, we should first hold responsible the perpetrators of the abuse. The teacher and the janitor should be charged with abuse. They get sentenced to some years in prison.

But he is still addicted to drugs on the Downtown East Side. Did he mention he has kids? Needless to say, he doesn’t see them much. He abused them because of the drugs and my self-esteem issues. These damages go beyond just himself.

We could hold the school administration accountable for their hiring of the teacher and the janitor. Perhaps he tried to tell them about his abuse, but they turned a blind eye, because they feared for their jobs if it should be found that they failed to screen out such criminals. Perhaps they feared being painted as endorsing the conduct of those employees, so they said nothing. If these can be proven, then those responsible for such neglect of duty should also be tried and convicted. Again, limited liability. They are provably responsible for tacitly condoning or perhaps an accessory to such abuse. Try and convict.

But he is still downtown, addicted to drugs.

How about that school? The admin are punished; the teacher, punished; the janitor, punished. Maybe it is the fault of the organization. Maybe the very structure of placing teachers “in authority” over students gave rise to the abuse. Maybe the whole school should be punished. How can a school be punished? As an organization, it has assets. It can be held responsible for a debt of cash. They could be forced to liquidate assets, change their structure to accomodate such a loss, or in an extreme case, forced to close their doors. Perhaps it is deserved, if the idea of “school” is inherently casual to the abuse that he suffered that led to the ruination of his life.

But this is where I draw the line. At this level, we have to begin to look at who else is being affected by this pursuit of “justice”. At this stage, we are causing punishment to other employees of that school, who had nothing to do with the hurt. We are causing punishment to their families from job loss. We are causing punishment on all the other students, who did not participate in his abuse, with the loss of their school. Education disrupted, perhaps delayed, with lifelong ramifications for people who had nothing really to do with my abuse.

But if this is justified, then why not the next level? Why is not the school board liable? If they are liable, now we enter into a whole new realm of punishment. Now, if the school board is held liable for a value of money to “make reparations” for my abuse, that cash is not paid by anyone directly responsible. It is paid for by every single resident of that school board’s jurisdiction, in the form of school taxes, or the part of property taxes that pays for school. Now, every homeowner in that district is paying the reparations, though there is no concievable way you could hold them in any way responsible for my abuse.

But some would take this yet further. The school board is but an arm of government. The government has supervisory responsibility over all school boards, by virtue of the Ministry of Education. If they are in charge, then they too are responsible for the actions of those they have charge of. Now, any monetary reparations are being borne by every single person who pays taxes in that country. Each taxpayer has no choice about paying their “share” of those taxes that are going to the reparations. Even if those taxpayers don’t even live in the same province, they are paying. They are paying “reparations” for a “wrong” that they as individuals, have zero responsibility for.

Yet, I have been told in recent days, that for me to say this is “racist”. That I am a bigot for not accepting my fair share of blame for the pain caused by people I don’t even know, for wrongs I never even knew were being committed. Comparisons are drawn to the recent decision to hold the Catholic diocese in California responsible for the abuse conducted by priests in that area. Was the whole diocese responsible? It bumps into that line of responsibility. If the reparations wind up causing the loss of funding for other programs offered by the diocese, say to unwed mothers, orphans, etc, then some people there are being punished for something not even remotely their fault. Is that fair? Is the nunnery on the hill outside of San Luis Obispo (fictional, but I am sure there are some out there) deserving of losing the money to buy cloth to create tapestries that they sell to support themselves deserving of punishment because a small number of priests abused some people at the other end of the State? It begins to be a hard decision, doesn’t it?

Now, this connects directly to the hotly debated subject of residential schools in Canada. If we agree with holding the Catholic Church’s diocese in California being held responsible for abuse as a body of parts, some of which had zilch to do with the actual abuse, endorsement of abuse, or even failing to act to curb the abuse (because some of those connected to the diocese simply had no contact or awareness of those parts in any way shape or form) then here in Canada, where the residential schools program was administrated by the Catholic Church, we should be able to hold them as a body responsible. This would affect probably the same number of unrelated ministries and people as the California decision does (given the numbers of Hispanic Catholics in California, and the comparable populations of the Golden State to Canada).

But the argument started from holding the government responsible for reparations. Based on what I have said above, given the numbers of people who the Government of Canada receives its funding from, who had absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the people in the residential schools program, nor did they have any awareness of the abuse (so cannot be considered culpable by doing nothing to stop it), it is patently wrong to hold the Canadian government responsible for paying reparations for the program. It makes an entire nation responsible for the reprehensible actions of only a few. It imputes responsibility for crimes (admittedly horrible crimes) on the innocent, and not just one innocent, but millions. Tens of millions.

When private indviduals are held responsible for their actions, they pay. When corporations are held responsible for their actions, limited liability applies, to focus in on the individuals who were responsible within the corporation. To hold a government responsible (especially a democracy, but any government ultimately requires taxes from its citizens, which would be a criminal offence not to pay) is to hold, to a degree, every single citizen liable for the crime. While this is not without precedent, it is a lot easier to demonstrate that, say, a much larger percentage of Germans were either actively involved in the Holocaust or chose not to object to it (and impute responsibility for it upon themselves by doing nothing to stop it) than there were Canadians directly involved in the residential school program or were aware of its abuses and did nothing. But without getting into a debate of “what percentage of a population mst be culpable before it is reasonable to require all to pay reparations”, I believe the underlying question is that of the justice of making one innocent person pay reparations for something they had no responsibility for.

Do I have a problem with an organization or foundation forming to collect donations to support the victims of abuse in residential schools? Heck no! I would invite any and all Canadians to donate to such a worthy cause! I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that a lot of people have suffered a lot, and may need extra help to overcome their situations. I would even donate to such a cause myself, out of sympathy and care for my fellow man. But such a donation would be voluntary, and would not involve any imputation of responsiblity upon myself for the plight of those victims. That is the difference I see.

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Unfortunately, tangible progress is not happening fast enough to contain the mounting frustrations of younger natives. “Canada’s biggest challenge is what to do about First Nations poverty,” Mr. Fontaine asserts. We agree.

What a challenge. It’s called, “getting a job.”

People have used this ingenious strategy to confront their poverty for some time. But it likely won’t fly amongst some people. Where are the lawyers? The consultants? The bureaucrats? The Royal Commission? The academic studies? “Hello, people!?…this is no way for natives to deal with their poverty!!!“

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That quote above came from this CBC article about today’s Native *Day of Action*. I don’t know about most of you who live out west, but frankly, the fact that the Natives were too lazy to actually do anything in Ontario is quite symbolic. If there was any action today, it came from the OPP and indirectly from our elected officials who tripped over themselves to appease these spoiled brats of Confederation and do a pre-empt shutdown of the 401 and Via Rail. Say what you will about Osama, but at least when he says he’s gonna blow up westerners, he doesn’t call it off in the end to go outside of his cave and have a cigarette!

Anyway, our society today has once again demonstrated that we are all too eager to give the Native bands of this country even more concessions and more privileges just so that they, what? Cry poor again and threaten the harmony of our society again? As the quote above demonstrates, these guys know a good deal when they see it. The real question the rest of us should be asking tonight though is, when are we going to realize that their golden goose is ours cooking in the oven?

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You know the funny thing about civil disobedience? To engage in it, you have to accept the legal consequences of the disobedience instead of jumping into your pick-up truck, lighting a cigarette, and speeding back to the sanctity of the reserve. Wonder which of these two behaviours we’ll see more of today following any anticipated “disruptions.”

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Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre is calling on the federal government to build a Canadian Forces base for native soldiers.

“I think that we have to show sensitivity since Canada is also composed of first nations,” Mr. Coderre said yesterday.

Brooks:

That the Liberal defence critic should be advocating racial segregation for aboriginal soldiers in the year 2007 is astonishing, and extremely disappointing. And it shows just how unserious a player Denis Coderre is in Canada’s ongoing defence dialogue.

You think? This is in addition to Coderre’s judicial jousting with Shane Doan. What was the thought process that led Stephane Dion to give Coderre the defence critic position?

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Down in Hogtown, Mayor David Miller is moving full-steam ahead with his new “revenue tools” that will tax Jays’ games, alcohol and dot the Toronto landscape with toll roads in order to get the rest of Ontario to pay for Toronto’s roads too when they use them. One Toronto city councillor recently inferred that this latest measure was on the table because the rest of the province was freeloading by using the Ontario capital’s roads.

These are but two of the examples of how Ontario’s regions and municipalities are currently in a war with each other to see if they can get the rest of the province to pay more money into their area via provincial and local taxes than they pay out to the rest of Ontario. I would suggest that this is just like the provincial tug-of-war that every Prime Minister has to wrestle with each year, but it is far worse because the Peter that various mayors and councils are robbing to pay Paul are far closer than half-a-country away saints that we see federally.

No one has yet bothered to mention that both Toronto and Hamilton have benefitted greatly from the forced charity of the rest of Ontario, especially the former. As I mentioned above, Toronto used to get money from its immediate neighbours becuase of the presumed cost that commuters burden Toronto with; no one ever figured though that Torontonians might also be costing places like Mississauga, Burlington or Brampton though! Toronto, because it has roughly 25% of the provinical seats in the legislature, also never has an issue at the end of the day in getting extra money whenever it comes, cap-in-hand, to Queen’s Park. Even when a Toronto rep. is confronted with the obvious imbalance between the money the province puts into Toronto and the far smaller amount coming out of the city, they crassly suggest that this scam is only natural since Toronto is the “economic engine” of Ontario. Forget that Miller and his socialist commards will kill all buisness in Toronto as we know it or that places like Waterloo, Nepean or Burlington are housing more and more of the province’s industries and buisnesses; what about the fact that what Toronto thinks is *its* buisnesses actually reside in the areas around it with a fraction of its tax rate. Places like Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering are where you are finding the economic growth in the GTA these days. Etobicoke and North York used to be in this category too, but ever since they were sucked into Toronto’s uncompetitive tax and spend system in 1998, they too have seen a dramatic decrease in buisness that didn’t have to be in Toronto proper.

If cities, led by Toronto’s example, don’t soon learn to live within their means, and to have the decency to pay their own bills instead of asking the town down the street to, we’ll see the mild recession that Ontario is going through turn into an all-out long-lasting decline in economic performance. Buisness goes where costs are the cheapest. With the constant war by Ontario cities to pick the pockets of taxpayers clean, we’ll soon find that Michigan, New York, and even Quebec will be more attractive for our job-creating companies to reside in. Ontario cities should only be involved in the services they have to be for local benefit; the rest of us who visit from time to time will get along quite nicely without an extra park in eastern TO!

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Under the province’s Wildlife Act, the perpetrators could face penalties for poaching of up to $50,000 or six months in jail for a first offence, or both. For trafficking eagle parts: a year in jail and $100,000 fine, or both for each count. Federally, the charges for illegal exporting of the parts were even stiffer: up to five years in jail and $150,000 fine.

But, after the sentence for one of the traffickers was handed down last week, optimism that the poachers would be severely dealt with by our justice system was quickly dampened.

One of the suspects received a paltry fine of $1,450 after pleading guilty to a pair of counts relating to the trafficking of eagle parts.

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A new poll suggests the aboriginal standoff in Caledonia is beginning to hurt the governing Liberals. That’s easy to understand. The occupation has been poorly handled from the outset…many Ontarians now believe there are two laws in the province - one for non-natives and one for natives.

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The B.C. Court of Appeal ruled the judge at Darnell Pratt’s trial didn’t properly take into account his young age and his aboriginal background.

h/t

Update: Just so that everyone is clear on what it is we’re dealing with here:

De Patie’s body, naked except for tattered clothes around his ankles, was found 7.5 kilometres from the Esso at the end of a trail of blood. His flesh had been ground away to the bone on his face, ribs, right leg and chest, his liver was torn, and his pelvis broken.

“Mr. De Patie did not die from being struck by a car, but rather from injuries he sustained while being dragged alive under the vehicle,” Bernard said, drawing sobs from De Patie’s mom.

After hitting De Patie and driving around Maple Ridge, Pratt went to a friend’s and told people he’d killed someone. Then he and others drove in a stolen truck to Hope and back.”

So let’s amend the original post to: Be an indian, get a free pass to torture someone to death. Quite the cause that the proponents of racial apartheid in Canada have chosen to fight for.

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Aboriginal Justice Strategy
* $14.5 million over two years to expand the Aboriginal Justice Strategy to significantly increase the number of Aboriginal Canadians that have access to community justice programs.

Housing in First Nations Communities
* $300 million to give First Nation members the opportunity to own their own homes when a new approach to on-reserve housing is developed.

Skills and Employment Partnership Program
* $105 million over five years to more than double the size of the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Partnership initiative.

Atlantic Commercial Fisheries
* $20 million over the next two years to support First Nations in the Maritimes and in the Gaspé region of Quebec in increasing their management and harvesting capabilities and in playing a greater role in fisheries management.

In other words, millions of dollars to give indians free lawyers and build indians free house. Millions for make-work projects for indians. And millions to give indians bigger fishing boats. This in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars already spent to enrich corrupt band officials and bureaucrats. All while continuing to perpetuate the poverty of reserve populations.

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Then tucked away at the bottom of the piece was a discussion about how Dion set up a bunch of critical committees to oppose the government’s ccommittees.  It then dealt with how all these extra positions allowed him to reach out to not only the former Liberal leadership challengers, but also their supporters.

Then he pointed out two local MPs and the profiles they were given: Anita Neville with Indian Affairs and Tina Keeper with Heritage.

These two stuck out for me because I immediately remembered North of 60, the last CBC show that even moderately entertained me, mostly because of the fact that in its early seasons it featured as the RCMP guy new to town the star of an anti-drunk driving video I recall watching back when I was in High School.  It turned out to be a pretty good dramatic look at Canada’s north, in stark contrast to the silly version portrayed in Northern Exposure (which I know was supposed to take place in Alaska, and was actually filmed in Washington State, and even failed at portraying Alaska, let alone the REAL North, though it was darned funny, but I digress).

Anyway, said TV show also starred an aboriginal actress named Tina Keeper.  I recalled hearing that she was a candidate in the last Federal election, so it was good to see she got elected.  Too bad as a Liberal, but I digress (for about the 3rd time already).

Knowing that she is a native, and seeing as how she received the Heritage post from Dion, I thought it was plausible, someone involved in TV and having a native heritage would make sense in that post.  Canadiana and all that.  But who was this Anita Neville?

Turns out she’s been an MP for a while, in Heritage and Women’s issues!

So, not only is this shadow cabinet bloated and redundant, but on the surface, it looks like he drew names out of a hat for positions, given that at first glance, Keeper as an actual Indian would be qualified for Indian Affairs, and given Neville as having actually served as parliamentary secretary to the Canadian Heritage Ministry, she would be more qualified for that!

Or maybe Mr. Dion is just so much smarter than simple old me that there is a much better explanation.

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The most sensible excerpt on Dalton cynical attempt to wring money out of the federal government to subsidize their own cowardice on the Caledonia file:

When readers are deciding who is ultimately responsible for the Caledonia file, they should ask themselves the following question: Should Prime Minister Harper be expected to pay for things he had no say in approving, such as the cost of purchasing the occupied land, the cost of keeping the occupiers’ hydro and water running, the cost of the business compensation package and the $1,500 per day negotiating fee paid to Jane Stewart, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister?

h/t

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Chett and Flo Crellin’s 24-year-old grandson - an energetic, thoughtful and conscientious young man - was dragged to his death by a drunk punk stealing gas in Maple Ridge on March 8, 2005.

By the time the driver stopped, Grant de Patie’s body was bounced, ground and scraped over seven kilometres of pavement, his body almost unrecognizable, his clothing shorn to shreds.

And, for what?

To steal $12.30 worth of gas.

The crime produced Grant’s Law, which requires gas stations in British Columbia to use pre-pay services after a certain hour. It also produced a nine-year sentence for the murderer, Darnell Pratt.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pratt will be appealing the sentence, arguing that it is too severe. The basis for the appeal? That the lower court judge did not take into account the fact that Pratt is an aboriginal when determining the sentence. The crown is arguing that Pratt’s aboriginal race was taken into account in the lower court.

By which we should infer that race should partially determine the length of sentences for murder convictions, and that aboriginal race should result in more lenient sentences.

There is such a thing as judicial discretion in sentencing, which is desirable or even essential, and such a thing as race-based sentencing and an effective legal apartheid. This is closer to the latter.

So what we know is that the OPP refuses to listen to the courts and has, if we are to believe the OPP commissioner, received no direction from the government on how to proceed.

Getting back to our political science foundations: What’s it called when the coercive arm of the state refuses to be directed by the judicial or executive branches and instead does whatever the hell it wants?

Anyone from Latin America care to hazard a guess?

Too harsh on the native police? Perhaps you should ask yourself why those “police” have been unable to apprehend seven natives with outstanding warrants, one for attempted murder. Oh right, because the elders and “clan mothers” decided to remove the alleged criminals from the situation.

At least we know who the native police answer to. And the violence of the last three months has made it painfully clear what the agenda of the elders and “clan mothers” is.

It makes one wonder why the OPP have decided to abandon the residents of Caledonia. It is almost certainly as a result of the intervention of the relevant union. As everyone knows, Dalton McGuinty’s spine turns to jelly when dealing with a) natives and b) unions. Bad combination in this case, at least for the abandoned and hopeless residents of Caledonia.

If you ever find yourself charged with trying to kill a police officer, don’t worry about being arrested - your family will just hide you away, and nobody will do anything about it, although the premier of your province might make some plaintive bleating noises. There’s just one catch - you have to be a native…

And what of those seven protesters that will never be arrested (predicted by ThePolitic here)? What of the Six Nations involvement in their protection?:

The native leadership now says the seven have been “removed from the area.” Since the whole business is “political” this is not, of course, a conspiracy to obstruct justice…Tried to kill a cop? Hey, it was political! No problem!

And now we have the news that McGuinty has used public funds to buy out Henco’s developments. But of course. All the better to hand over the disputed land to natives, who have gained this reward through vandalism, attempted murder, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Ontario: The Coward Province

Update: Andrew Smith:

The Ontario government has decided to settle the Caledonia dispute by appeasement…The Indians have effectively gotten away with lawlessness and it is clear this will only cause more lawlessness in the future… fear it is going to be a long, hot summer of friction between the two communities because now the Indians know they have nothing to lose.

Exactly.

Update: More common sense from the right side of the Blogosphere:

…it sends two very damaging messages: 1) That violent protest is effective and 2) That the government will allow them to circumvent the laws of the land. The first is very problematic, since its not like Caledonia is the only part of the province which some native band somewhere claims.

And more here:

If there are no negative consequences for the natives, you can expect to see this kind of thing happen all over Ontario and beyond.

People who work at Burger King in Calgary currently make $12 an hour. Employers can’t keep their employees. My tolerance for people who want the government to subsidize their remaining in economically moribund regions is currently at zero.

By the way: h/t goes to Stageleft.

The OPP are trying to recover copies of classified documents containing the identities of undercover officers at an aboriginal protest in Caledonia.

The papers contain the names of officers involved in the standoff, home phone numbers and information from confidential informants.

Undercover officers. Yikes. I wonder what types of (bloody?) retribution await those officers at the hands of the “warrior” thugs that are involved in this conflict on the native side? Let’s hope that they can get out in time.

And then there was this:

They also include notes of investigations into human smuggling across the Canada-U-S border along the Niagara frontier.

It’s enough to make one wonder if the car-jacking of this vehicle was intentional, by which I mean that the vehicle was targetted. Someone, one of the criminal interests involved in this conflict, will benefit greatly from these documents.

ThePolitic (June 10): “Yeah. Who else is thinking that these seven natives will mysteriously never be found?”

The CBC (June 12): “Reading between the lines, there’s a pretty good possibility they’re on the reserve” and the Ontario Provincial Police are negotiating their surrender, Northcott said. The OPP have a protocol not to enter the reserve, he said.”

Of course, cops also have a protocol to vigorously pursue people who allegedly attempt to murder police officers. But that protocol doesn’t fit into McGuinty’s increasingly desperate overall strategy (check out the backflips) to escape Caledonia unscathed.

- A reporter is assaulted, robbed, and extorted;
- A cameraman is assaulted to the extent that he requires stitches to close a head wound;
- An elderly couple is attacked in their car. The old man, who suffers from a heart condition, is rushed to hospital;
- Occupants of a vehicle were dragged from their car, beaten, and narrowly escaped being run down by the stolen vehicle.

Where are the police? After weeks of standing by and watching as the law was broken, including one episode where an OPP officer stood a few feet away and watched as a cameraman was concussed by thugs, the police have decided to get tough:

Police are looking for seven people who face several charges, including attempted murder, assault and forcible confinement, after a string of violent clashes at the scene of a long-standing aboriginal blockade in southern Ontario.

Yeah. Who else is thinking that these seven natives will mysteriously never be found?