The Gods of the Copybook Headings

The Tiresome Mr McHale

Keeping busy:

An Ontario Conservative staffer wrote a crudely-worded e-mail about Caledonia activist Gary McHale and sent it to the man’s website.

McHale told Sun Media Tuesday that Rob Willett, who works in Tory MPP Toby Barrett’s office, called him to apologize for the critical message.

“More of Gary’s same ol’ s--- — at least it keeps him busy!!” Willett’s e-mail says.
McHale said he believes the e-mail was in reply to the invitation he had extended to PC Leader Tim Hudak to join him in Caledonia.

Is incompetent political assistant syndrome a communicable disease? We've had a divorce details leaking Liberal assistant, a Tory flack who was turfed for his alleged involvement in the Robocalls scandal and now a provincial PC staffer insults Gary McHale, the Caledonia equal rights activist. I take it that mature judgement is not a requirements to become a political aide. 

Rob Willett, the profane flack in question, called Mr McHale and professed his deepest apologies for the e-mail. It seems he was suppose to send the e-mail to someone else. That's right. He's terribly sorry that he insulted Gary McHale directly, he only meant to insult him behind his back. You know how these things go. 

Let's take Mr Willett at his original word. Gary McHale is back to his "ol' s__t" and it does keep him busy. In fact he's spent the last five years working on exposing the disgrace of the Caledonia occupation. This isn't a news story or a photo-op for Mr McHale, it's his life. Nor is it an especially profitable life. Being an activist can bring you a good income, if you're advocating for the right causes. Fighting for equal rights against aboriginal thugs is not a "right cause."

For his troubles Gary McHale has been arrested, charged (those charges subsequently being dropped for lack of evidence) and insulted by scores of people. The Commissioner of the OPP, Julian Fantino, who now sits in the federal cabinet, hounded him for years. This ain't glamorous work and unlike being an MPP the pension sucks. 

Some might accuse McHale of being a publicity hound. Yet that's rather the problem, getting publicity. Prance about the front lawn of Queen's Park demanding free university tuition, or new legislation to save the endangered salamanders, and you'll get the obligatory ten seconds on the nightly news. If you're savvy enough to spark a riot, you might get yourself on television for months on end. Demand that the laws of Canada be enforced equally? Good luck with that wacko cause.

Mr HcHale, as well as his associate Mark Vandermaas, also have the distinct disadvantage of being white christians. In modern Canada only "minorities" can be victims. Thus the laws of the land can be perverted as a matter of course, the behaviour justified on the most noble grounds, because it is in the name of "helping" a victim group.

The old racism consisted of a making Group X superior to all others within a society. Everyone else was regarded, at best, as a second class citizen. For a fleeting moment, sometime during the Diefenbaker years, there was a sincere notion of racial and ethnic equality held by the great and good of the Dominion. It might not have been consistently applied, but those in charge were moving in the right direct. In 1961 Canada insisted that racial equality was a fundamental value of the Commonwealth. By 2006 we weren't sure it was a fundamental value in rural Ontario.

The Hudak Tories have been as silent as the tomb on Caledonia. John Tory, whilst party leader, at least attempted to show concern. Being a very cautious and unimaginative pol, Tim Hudak has stayed away from the issue. In fairness to Toby Barrett, he's stuck his neck out a bit over Caledonia. That's one of the tragedies of Caledonia. Simple decency is now a brave thing.

Why Caledonia still matters, even six years after the Douglas Creek Estates were occupied, is not what happened that day or in the months that followed. It's more than the beating of Sam Gualtieri, or the destruction of a hydro transformer. No it's the response of the authorities, or more correctly the lack thereof. Crime happens, that's an unavoidable part of life. That's why we have a justice system. When basic laws are not enforced there is a crime greater than the mere offence in question.

Behind all the actions and inactions of the OPP, the media and the courts is this simple idea: racism. From the Premier of Ontario down to the cop on the Caledonia beat, they are all afraid of being called racist. This is the power of ideas, especially bad ideas, in action. A powerful modern government, which does not hesitate to arrest a man for a child's drawing, cowering in terror before thugs from a racial minority. Leviathan frightened by a politically correct mouse.

That's why Gary McHale needs to keep up his "ol' s__t" for the foreseeable future.

 

Disturbers of the Peace

Mr McHale "tresspasses" on a public road:

On Friday (Feb 03/12) all charges against the Caledonia Eight – arrested Dec 03/11 for ‘trespassing’ on a county road running through the occupied Douglas Creek Estates in Caledonia – were dropped by the specially-chosen prosecutor brought in to handle the cases.

The McGuinty government had threatened to arrest non-native protesters who attempted to enter the natives-only ‘no go zone’ which even the OPP cannot enter without permission from the occupiers. Eight of us lined up, one-by-one, to be arrested for refusing to obey the OPP’s order to leave the road known as Syrie Street.

Let those words sink in: "Even the OPP cannot enter without permission." That's Caledonia. Aside from the National Post, Christie Blatchford and Sun Media, this story has been largely ignored by the great and good of the MSM. Mr McHale has been arrested 5 times and had 3 criminal charges laid. All eventually dropped. He was hounded by the then Commissioner of the OPP, Julian Fantino, who now sits in the federal cabinet. Where is the Toronto Star? Where is the Globe and Mail? Oh, right. They're busy covering the Scandal of the Century. 

My main criticism of the MSM is not that they let their biases appear so often and so clearly, it's their sheer incompetence. A system of racial apartheid is being de facto enshrined in suburban Ontario, yet they're more concerned about whether some minor bureaucrat at Citizenship and Immigration staged a reaffirmation ceremony. The Prime Minister of Canada makes an off-hand remark about the demographic tsunami threatening to engulf the country, and hints at some minor tinkering, and the story is that Stephen Harper wants to throw old people out into the streets.

Try something radical: Report the news. 

For those wondering why Canadian journalism has slide so far, take a gander at this blog post from John Gordon Miller, a professor at Ryerson's J-school. In mocking the planned Freedom Weekend being hosted by Sun News, this educator of Canada's young noted:

Makes you wonder when was the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn't police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?

I guess Mr Miller thinks that Krista Erickson bears a passing resembling to a terrorist. I hear Al-Qaeda prefers blonds. Even as a joke Professor Miller's blog post fails miserably. How does a educated man casually compare political opponents, who have never advocated violence against the peaceful, to terrorists? He has spent the last two decades in the academic echo-chamber, after having spent a previous two decades at the Toronto Star, so this sort of rhetoric seems perfectly reasonable.

Call it the Pauline Kael effect. In 1972 the New York Times film critic wondered how President Richard Nixon could have won re-election, since everyone she knew voted for Senator George McGovern. The observation became a classic example of how America's cultural elite were out of touch with the wider population. This continued well through out the next forty years. Recall the cheap mockery of Ronald Reagan and both the young and elder President Bush.

You see the same sort of thing on certain blog comment threads. It is a game of rhetorical one-upmanship. I say something nasty about our mutual opponents, so you say something even nastier. Keep doing this long enough and your opponents cease to be people who have incorrect beliefs, they instead become monsters in the night. But Professor Miller isn't a guy in a rented basement warning of the vast Zionist conspiracy, he's moulding minds at Canada's top journalism school.

Finley Peter Dunne famously noted that the job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Professor Miller looks pretty damn comfortable. Perhaps some of his former students would care to do their jobs and report on this washed up hack.

 

Caledonia Capture

The upside down world of Dalton McGuinty's Ontario:

Members of the ”Canadian Advocates For Charter Equality” will be in a Cayuga court today facing trespassing charges.

This, after Police arrested them for stepping into the Douglas Creek Estates land in Caledonia last month, something Gary McHale and the others deny doing.

McHale says they were standing on a county road.

How do you trespass on a public roadway? Well, you see part of Caledonia was effectively ceded to a group of aboriginal "protesters" nearly six years ago. These "protesters" have a kind of diplomatic immunity, allowing them to cause havoc in the surrounding area with a minimal response from the OPP.

If non-aboriginals happen to wander onto what is basically another country, the provincial police force will kindly restrain them. Keep in mind that it would be easier for Mr McHale & Co to visit Buffalo than to visit the Douglas Creek Estates. A slice of rural Ontario has become a de facto independent state. Why is this not the biggest news story in Canada? 

Canadian Apartheid

Some Canadians are more equal than others:

Yet Smoke's lawyer argued that her client was raised in a culture of racism, and negatively impacted by the legacy of the residential school system (of which Smoke himself was never a part, having been born a full 15 years after the last residential school in Ontario closed). She asked Judge Whitten to consider the "aboriginal perspective" when determining Smoke's sentence.

Consider it, Judge Whitten most certainly did. For a vicious assault on an unarmed man who was going about his lawful business on private property, Smoke was sentenced to only two years and 11 months. With time served, Smoke will serve less than two years behind bars for a crime even Judge Whitten believes was barely below intentional murder.

It is estimated that 40,000 survivors of the Holocaust moved to Canada after the war. I don't recall any of them being given special treatment in criminal cases. Richard Smoke is hardly a victim of Nazi-style persecution. Only in the fervid imaginations of the Canadian Left, a disproportionate number of whom sit on the bench, is Canada a land in which anti-aboriginal racism is systematic or pervasive. There are a plethora of government programs, including affirmative action style programs, to assist status Indians. The University of Toronto Law School has a special admissions category just for aboriginals.

There is certainly racism in modern Canada, it is mostly directed at those of European descent. It is a racism that has been devised and implemented overwhelmingly by people of European descent. White people hampering other white people to help non-whites. Think of it as a collectivism where one collective abnegates itself in favour of another collective. Altruistic collectivism in its purest form.

I use the word "help" in a relative way. At some level the self-hating white folks do think they are helping various minorities. Altruism, however, is not their primary motivation. As is often the case altruism is the justification for an irrational psychological need. In this case it is a desire to feel morally superior. This is a substitute for earned self-esteem. 

Trying to help yourself, or members of your own "tribe," would be a "selfish" act. Going out of your way to help members of another "tribe" would be altruistic, and therefore a morally superior act. It also helps assuage feelings of collective guilt. The sins of the white father having fallen upon the white children. Turning ethnic or racial minorities, who combined are the majority in parts of modern Canada, into wards of the state does not, in any objective sense, help them.

Millions of immigrants have come to Canada since 1867. A great number of them have suffered genuine racism and discrimination. The Irish Catholics who fled the famine. The Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The Vietnamese boat people. And on and on. These groups arrived, struggled and succeeded. They did so inspite of the low-regard many were held in by the rest of Canadian society. They were lucky no one tried to "help" them the way the aboriginals have been helped over the last century.

Racism is a type of collectivism. It can only be fought through individualism. To many today individualism means the freedom to express oneself in dress, manner and speech. Being "different" the way everyone else is trying to be "different." Actual difference of opinion, especially those associated with the Right, are less encouraged. A deeper understanding of individualism is freedom of thought and action, matched with a responsibility for the consequences of those actions.

In the name of adjusting for the legacy of racism, Justice Whitten has committed a racist act worthy of Jim Crow. Rather than punishing Richard Smoke appropriately for his crimes, the judge has decided to punish Sam Gualtieri again for the crime of being non-aboriginal. Mr Gualtieri must see the man who beat him walk away after the lightest possible sentence. He must spend the rest of his days dealing with the pain and suffering of his beating, while his assailant is free to live his life.

Adam Smith once observed that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. Justice Whitten has been much crueler than Richard Smoke. The latter is merely a petty thug, the former has helped undermine both justice and individual liberty in one stroke.

 

Caledonia Comes to Quebec

In university I told an unbelieving fellow student that one day, in the not too distant future, aboriginals would make a land claim for downtown Toronto. Looks like I got the city wrong:

A group of Algonquins in West Quebec is preparing to launch what could be the largest land claim in Canada’s history — for a swath of territory covering 650,000 square kilometres across Eastern Ontario and West Quebec.

Stretching from Sault Ste. Marie and Cochrane in Northern Ontario through much of Eastern Ontario, including Ottawa, the territory cuts across West Quebec to Montreal, and all the way to the confluence of the Saint-Maurice and St. Lawrence rivers at Trois-Rivières. About two-thirds of the land is in Quebec.

Hey, what's an area the size of France between friends? The basis of the claim seems to be that because, centuries ago, this swath of land belonged to their ancestors it therefore still belongs to them. Interesting. Centuries ago my ancestors owned Brazil, as well as other assorted bits of global real estate. I wonder what would happen if I, and few of my fellow Lusitanians, showed up in Rio tomorrow, our brows appropriately furrowed, and demanded the country back.  

Needless to say that the samba flash mobs would be escorting us out of the country fairly quickly. Before reaching the airport the Brazilians would, rather correctly, point out that we were told to shuffle off 190 years ago and could return only as tourists or immigrants. My ancestors lost, the Brazilians won, and everyone moved on. Any modern Portuguese politician suggesting that the Empire should be reconquered would get his head examined.

Demanding that large sections of Ontario and Quebec, including Montreal, Ottawa, Cornwall, Brockville and Sault Ste Marie, be handed back to the Algonquins is no less absurd. The aboriginal leaders, however, are sane enough to understand that even the supine governments of Messers Charest and McGuinty will never hand back large parts of the country. The odd suburb perhaps, but surrendering areas the size of large European countries might attract the attention of Canada's usually bovine MSM.

The goal here is an old fashioned shakedown. Nice little white liberal guilt complex you've got here, wouldn't want anyone to exacerbate it. One has to, however, admire their frankness. Here is Gilbert Whiteduck, Chief of the Algonquins of Maniwaki:

“What we want to say to the premier is, ‘this is our territory, and since you are premier of Quebec, we want to be able to sit down with you and discuss the fact that resources are being taken from the land and there should be some kind of sharing arrangement here,’” he said.

Just give us a percentage, buddy, and we'll move along. That's what I like about grievance mongering aboriginal politicians. Their intention is to fleece you and they're upfront about it. Respect where it is due. The typical Canadian pol would give some long-winded, and altruism laced, spiel about how it was all being done for the sake of the poor, the sick and various minority groups. That's what we need in Canada today, more people like Gilbert Whiteduck, honestly expressing their thieving intent.

The claim is predicated on a series of remarkable conceits. First that the land has belonged to this particular tribe since creation and, therefore, rightfully belongs to this tribe until the end of time. But even if you are wiling to play collectivist land games, who owned it before the Algonquin? Should that particular group be identified, will the Algonquins be kind enough to pass along a percentage? What about the Mohawk who have long claimed areas around Montreal and Cornwall? What's their piece of the action?

Unfortunately tribal boundaries were rather unclear before the arrival of Europeans. Semi-nomadic stone age societies are not know for their exact record keeping. Such societies are also known, whatever your school teacher may have taught you, to have gone to war rather frequently. In the seventeenth century the Iroquois kicked the Huron (Wyandot) out of the Georgian Bay region of Ontario. So by politically correct logic, who does that area of Ontario belong to? The Huron or the Iroquois tribe? Some later group? How, as a European-Luso-Canadiano, am I suppose to know who to feel guilty toward?

The taxpayers of Canada spend billions on aboriginal communities every years. In return we have seen a culture of dependency and resentment emerge, along side brutal poverty, in the reserve system. The vast wealth which Chief Whiteduck is attempting to purloined is unlikely to help ordinary aboriginals. It is one more money sluice to keep the current aboriginal elite in power. That fact alone would justify rejecting such an absurd land claim.

As for history? Well, as the missionaries explained: Let the dead bury the dead.

 

Caledonia Calm

Not the end. Just the beginning of the end.

Beleaguered homeowners and businesses in Caledonia finally have won some compensation for the often-violent native occupation in their small town south of Hamilton.

The Ontario government Friday agreed to a $20-million compensation fund, settling a class action lawsuit filed five years ago at the height of the trouble.

The deal was approved by Superior Court Judge David Crane.

[…]

In June that year, lawyer John Findlay filed a class action suit on behalf of about 440 residents, 400 businesses and a smaller group of subcontractors who had been involved in the home construction on the site.

“It’s quite a good settlement in terms of a class proceeding,” Findlay told PostMedia Friday, a half-hour after Judge Crane approved the deal.

This is good news. The victims deserve compensation for a failure by their government in its most basic obligations, the maintenance of peace and order. But it's not enough. As with the settlements granted to Dave Brown and Dana Chatwell and the payments made to the developers of the Douglas Creek Estates, peace is being bought.

I do not fault those who seek compensation for wrongs done against them. The issue, however, is still not resolved. Aboriginal "protestors" still occupy the seized property after five years. Since the purchase of the land by the provincial government they are unofficial guests of Her Majesty in Right of Ontario. 

While the "protestors" sit in Caledonia, Dalton McGuinty remains ensconced at Queen's Park. Defeat looms for the Premier in the fall, though for reasons having little to do with Caledonia. There is a huge gap between what has happened and should have happened. The current Liberal regime deserves to be defeated at the polls, though it should be defeated for the right reasons. Not simply due to the lethargy and contempt that grows upon a government after two terms in office. No, the McGuinty Liberals should meet their end for having allowed the Caledonia Crisis to persist for half a decade.

The peace violated, property destroyed, life and limb threatened and a de facto system of apartheid justice established in  Canada. These violations of our way of life have not been addressed. Peace has been bought, it has not been earned. These many millions that have been spent will be only so much Danegeld if justice against the guilty is not pursued.

The victims of Caledonia have successfully sued the government. Why has the government not investigated the relationship between the Six Nations authorities and "protestors?" Were these authorities complicit in these crimes? The taxpayers of this province have every right to demand their government seek restitution from the perpetrators. This may not, at this late date, be practicable. Efforts in this direction would, at the least, send a powerful and important symbolic message: the law applies to all. 

The central issue of the Caledonia Crisis has always been the equality of Canadians before the law. That is what is at stake in its aftermath. The victims have every claim upon our sympathy. Yet something far greater than their well being has been attacked, it is that force that allows for peaceful and civilized life. If that is lost we shall lose far more than a few millions of government monies.

Canada has fallen victim to what I have described as the Cult of Multi, the doctrine of multiculturalism which nominally holds that all cultures are equal. Thus the cultural values of nomadic savages are to be held on par with that of civilized nations. The choice between freedom and tyranny merely a relativistic preference. As a practical matter such an equality is impossible. Life, even for the most devoted of multiculturalists, requires choices. Who to support and whom to oppose being one of those choices. Consistently the multiculturalists have opposed the values of western civilization, and upheld those of any society or culture that stands in opposition to them.

The vast majority of Canadians, including even members of the Liberal Party caucus, do not consistently believe in multiculturalism. They judge Canada and our values superior to those of the rest of the world. They do not, however, completely reject the thesis of multiculturalism. They accept part of the premise that cultural values are relative.

In harmless matters such as dress, speech, peaceful ritual and cuisine this is of little importance. This undeserved tolerance, however, seeps into judgement on more important matters. Witness the relativistic spectacle at the Valley Park Middle School in Toronto, where religious services are held on school grounds (contrary to law) and young girls are treated as second class citizens. It can be safely said that had Christian clergy attempted such an affront, they would have dismissed out of hand. 

The emotional theme which runs through the Caledonia Crisis, the Valley Park disgrace and countless other surrenders of our way of life is guilt. Against a determined opposition a guilty man cannot long stand. A nation that feels guilty, that feels its values and ideals are no better than any other, will surrender at the first cry of racist. The Guilty Men of Queen's Park did so surrender, as did the Guilty Men of the Toronto District School Board.

That the Guilty Men in Queens's Park, the TDSB and Caledonia remain unpunished is the great unacknowledged crime of modern Canada.

Here is my page on the Caledonia Crisis. 

See also Mark Vandermass' extensive comments on the settlement and where we go from here.

Standing on Guard

I take it that the Prime Minister did not consult Gary McHale before making his cabinet appointments. Just a guess:

After the 2008 election, the regional development agency he headed, ACOA, was taken away. And then at Wednesday’s swearing-in, Mr. MacKay found himself still at the helm of the Department of National Defence but with a seemingly lesser role after Mr. Fantino was named Associate Minister of Defence.

[...]

Later, however, Mr. MacKay made it very clear he still remains the chief, telling reporters that Mr. Fantino reports to him.

An elevation in power and prestige for Julian "Caledonia" Fantino. Perhaps a reward for his gruelling five months as Minister of State for Seniors. Or perhaps for not tripping over the furniture since his election as MP for Vaughn last autumn. Let us hope that none of the defense contractors he deals with have connections to militant aboriginal protestors. That first squadron of F-35s might cost us British Columbia. Yesterday, I wrote of Canada's cliched conservatives, our Tory overlords who do not understand actual conservative values, instead governing through an elaborate impersonation of the genuine article. Julian Fantino is their biggest cliche.

I'm not referring to the former OPP Commissioner's histrionic public speaking style, nor his tendency to respond to most criticism with feigned outrage. The Conservatives delight in projecting an image of being tough on crime. What better prop for modern Canadian political theatre than an ex-top cop? Even better a cop well known for being tough on crime. Well at least politically correct crime.

Those familiar with Julian Fantino's record on the Caledonia Crisis will recall the OPP's selective application of the Criminal Code based on race. This was done in the name of maintaining peace in that patch of rural Ontario. The Munich Conference was conceived in a similar light. As the recent occupation of High Park confirms, appeasement begets only greater appeasement. What began with a battle over a golf course at Oka, then an obscure provincial park called Ipperwash evolved into the anarchy of Caledonia. Now a slice of the largest park in the largest city in Canada has been ceded to a self proclaimed group of aboriginal "activists." Upon whose authority do they act? What is the legal basis of their action? Your guess is as good as mine.

High Park is only a few minutes by subway from the Provincial Legislature. What happens when this group of protesters / activists / random strangers of at least mostly aboriginal descent begin to dig up the front lawn at Queen's Park? Perhaps they'll try to tear down Queen Victoria's statue as it is offensive to the memories of their ancestors. There's a fine equestrian statue of Edward VII behind the legislature. A few ATVs ought to be able to pull that sucker down. Just in case there's an aboriginal burial mound in the park. You never know.

The Harper Conservatives love to talk tough on crime. Caledonia was the largest - and longest lasting - period of mass civil disorder in Canadian history in nearly forty years. The comparison between Caledonia and the October Crisis are instructive. Pierre Trudeau decided that seven years of blowing up mail boxes, the Montreal Stock Exchange and attacking military bases, topped off with the kidnapping of a British diplomat and the murder of a provincial minister of the crown, was rather enough. He broke the power of the FLQ decisively. Not bad for a Leftwing peacenik. 

How does Stephen Harper compare on the Trudeau scale of law and order toughness? Not so good. Sure there's plenty of talk of locking people up, though little indication of what will be done with them once they re-enter society (except perhaps lock them up again). There are draconian pieces of legislation that will allow police to snoop in ISP's client records without court supervision, along with the possible criminalization of hyperlinking.

In sharp contrast Caledonia was a genuine crime spree. The vast majority of the guilty in that spree have not been charged, much less taken to trial. You can shrug and say that the Caledonia Crisis is ultimately Dalton McGuinty's fault. Sure it is. But along the police and political chain of command there was Julian Fantino. Then there is the Prime Minister who appointed Fantino to cabinet.

Let's go back in time to 1970. Imagine a Caledonia style "protest" having been attempted in that era. You can't because it would never have been allowed to reach that level of disorder. How long before the local mayor demanded the Premier order the OPP to clear away the "protestors." Should that have failed the political pressure would have quickly flowed up to the Prime Minister.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the federal government to protect the rights and safety of ALL Canadians. If the lower levels of government cannot perform this basic task, then it is the responsibility of the federal government to intervene. There was no doubt about this understanding of the role of government in 1970. Trudeau did not flinch from deploying troops to secure Montreal. In retrospect his response seemed to be a gross over reaction. However only in retrospect. 

I am expecting too much of modern politicians? Have we sunk so low that a nominally Conservative Prime Minister not only failed to steep into the breech, but rewarded the man who played by-stander rather than perform his duty as a peace officer? Was Trudeau more of a law and order conservative than Stephen Harper? At the very least PET was unlikely to have rewarded Julian Fantino with a seat at the cabinet table for his heroic inaction at Caledonia.

 

Anarchy in the Park

As noted on Tuesday, a group of aboriginals has occupied a section of Toronto's High Park. Ho-Hum. One of my hobby-horses is the idea of a slippery slope. You allow a certain thing to happen. A precedent gets created. Soon a very small thing becomes a very big thing. The welfare state began in much the same way with old age pensions. Who could object to giving money to old poor people? Then the next step was the Baby Bonus. Who could object to giving money to young families? Especially when we already give money to old folks. Three generations on we are facing fiscal insolvency of a scale usually only seen in the wake of a major military defeat. 

We are now speeding down another very slippery slope, the aboriginal extortion racket. It began - so far as Canada is concerned - at the time of Oka. Gingerly we passed by other landmarks such as Ipperwash and most importantly Caledonia. We have reached another landmark in the occupation of High Park. To put this in perspective High Park is about 8km from Queen's Park. It was easy for Torontonians to shrug their shoulders during the Caledonia Crisis. After all, Hamilton is a far away place. High Park is on the subway line.

There is so far no proof that an aboriginal burial ground lies beneath that section of High Park, or indeed anywhere in the area. Even should one be discovered it does not therefore follow that such land, used for well over a century now as a city park, should revert to its former usage. As Michael Coren points out an Oxford college is built over a medieval Jewish cemetery. Let the dead bury the dead.

The ancient burial ground is merely a pretext. In fact the Indian burial ground is the most cliched of pretexts. Nearly impossible to prove and possessing the magic force of white liberal guilt. You hear the indignant cries: "How would like us to build over your grandmother's grave?" Well I actually met one of my grandmothers. I have no idea who my great-great-great-great-grandmother was and neither do most people. Anyone buried in High Park would not even have that close a relation to the occupiers. Put it another way. If tomorrow morning old Publius was to drive down to the US and occupy the building site of an aboriginal casino, claiming on specious grounds that the graves of white people would be disturbed, how far would I get?

Racial solidarity is a nasty thing. Ayn Rand once described racism as barnyard collectivism. A collectivism so primitive and irrational that it could appeal only to the most backward of mindsets. The link between the Mohawk Warriors and the Mississauga aboriginals who once lived in Toronto is at best tenuous. In centuries past these tribes slaughter each other with little regret. They did so long before a European language was spoken on these shores. 

For extortion to work a threat must be placed over the victim. Since the aboriginal tribes ceased being a serious military threat to European settlement of this continent more than two centuries ago, the threat is of a different nature. Certainly these "protestors" can be quite disruptive to civilized life, especially in a dense urban environment. A nation capable of fielding - for nearly a decade now - a credible military force on the other side of the world is more than capable of disarming a few dozen thugs. The local police forces could easily do so with the resources at their disposal. Or are the SWAT teams solely for the closure of marijuana grow-ops?

From the Premier of Ontario - arguably the second most powerful man in Canada - down to the beat cops in Caledonia or High Park, a force far more powerful than any army holds sway. It is the power of moral superiority. The aboriginal occupiers lack everything, except the moral certainty that what they are doing is just and proper. The modern Canadian state possess everything except moral certainly. Confronted with the presence of posturing thugs it surrenders cravenly. Why? Because it believes them to be possessed of moral superiority over the remainder of Canadian society. They are a special class apart from other Canadian citizens.

This moral pretence is born of a distorted historical narrative. Accordingly to this narrative - taught diligently in the schools for at least two generations now - the North American continent was a primeval paradise whose inhabitants lived in peace and harmony for millennia. Into this Eden, populated by Rousseau like Noble Savages, entered the rapacious and wicked Europeans. The pale face stole, murdered and cheated the aboriginals out of their birthright. Since it is now impossible to restore "Turtle Island" to its pre-Columbian past, the occasional surrender of territory and the annual expenditure of billions of dollars are acts of partial atonement.

The historical reality is rather less stark. Yes the Europeans were at times quite rapacious. So were the aboriginals. The Myth of the Conquest perpetuated by academics and aboriginal grievance mongers is of their simple, naive and trusting ancestors outwitted and overwhelmed by European settlers. Nothing could be less true and more insulting to the aboriginals of that time. They were overwhelmed certainly but hardly cheated. The economic value of the land they surrendered became great only after it was developed by European settlers. It had previously sustained a few thousand individuals at an extremely low level of development for millennia. After the arrival of the Europeans Canada could sustain a population of 34 million with one of the highest living standards in history. 

The network of treaties established under the auspices of the Crown - and later the Dominion government of Canada - were not a snare to catch unwary aboriginals. Had the British Empire so wished it could have easily displaced the aboriginal population without the pretext of a treaty. Thousands of Acadians were moved by force only a few decades earlier. The British had the means but preferred to negotiate. Why? Because they were attempting to secure the new continent for settlement in the most peaceful and civilized way possible. A manner largely alien to the conduct of the aboriginal tribes.

They hoped in time the aboriginal populations would be absorbed into the new colonial societies. This hope - whatever we may think of it today - was grounded not in malice but benevolence. It was better to live in a modern society than in a stone age culture. That today's aboriginal "protestors" forsake few of the technological and economic benefits of western societies, while denouncing the ideas that allow such societies to exist, is a testament to the superiority of the cultures that displaced their ancestors. To those not blinded by the myth of the noble savage, there is a darkly amusing irony in modern day bigots attacking the crimes of the "white man" while speaking on a cell phone and using a laptop.

The goal of the High Park "protestors" is not land. It is to decisively establish in practice what has already been established intellectually in the minds of many Canadians. That the whole this country morally belongs to the aboriginal peoples. The rest of us live here by their sufferance. What Canadian society pays to the aboriginals will no longer be treaty obligations, or our pity for the state of the aboriginal, no it shall be rent. And who shall collect that rent? Why the leadership of the aboriginal people. Not necessarily the legally defined leadership of these tribes, instead it will be parallel powers like the Mohawk Warriors. We shall now live at the gracious permission of these new tribal chieftains. Welcome to the bottom of the slippery slope.

 

Caledonia Comes to Toronto

Mr McGuinty, please call your office:

 A group of Mohawk Warriors has set up camp in a section of High Park, on land it says is a sacred burial site that has been over-run by off-road cyclists.

But any similarities to Oka and Caledonia end there; this is more of a public works project than a tension-filled standoff, with city officials providing a portable toilet and a shed for tools, and police insisting the campers "are not protesters."

Well neither are the Caledonia occupiers. The disputed land was purchased by the province and so the occupiers are technically guests of Her Majesty's government in right of Ontario. There is, as I suppose you've guessed, little proof that High Park contains aboriginal burial grounds. Rather than get into a nasty confrontation the local authorities have pre-emptively surrendered part of a city park to the Six Nations. There is no aboriginal reserve within miles of the City of Toronto. Why choose High Park? Well if you can dictate to the largest city in Canada how they run their largest park, you've redefined the terms of the "debate" on aboriginal issues. 

Tribal Medicine

Just one of those things...

Health care in the northern Manitoba community of Gods River is in such a state that the janitor has been running the X-ray machine, the community’s chief said Wednesday.

“A janitor in my community is tasked with conducting X-rays. You won’t see that at the Health Sciences Centre (in Winnipeg),” said Manto Sipi Cree Nation Chief Michael Yellowback, noting he himself got an X-ray recently that was conducted by the janitor.

Now in fairness this is an aboriginal reserve. Let me explain to our American readers. Canada's aboriginal reserve system is a network of taxpayer supported, racially based Third World ghettoes. While some have a semblance of representative government most are run by traditional tribal governments of nebulous authority and with minimal accountability.

From time to time criticism is raised of the appalling conditions on these reserves and the vast waste of money and well-being they entail. Should the critic be white he is immediately attacked as a racist. If the critic is an aboriginal he is immediately attacked as an Uncle Tom. Corruption and oppression protected by the iron wall of reverse racism. Any expectation of equality before the law, or plain human decency, is dismissed as an intrusion into the internal affairs of supposedly sovereign "nations," 

Finding out that a janitor is running pricey medical equipment on an aboriginal reserve is no great shock. Could be worse. Could be a traditional medicine man with no training at all. Who are we to judge other cultures? No matter that without the support of the Canadian taxpayer these little ghettoes would collapse within a fortnight.  

The aboriginal ghetto system is a glimpse into the life most people on this earth sadly live. Your identity is tribal not individual. Power is held in the hands of a small and largely hereditary elite. Some elites are more benevolent than others, but their positions are essentially unchallengeable. Just as Third World despots finance their regimes with western tax dollars, so do the reserve chiefs. The funds are made to flow by two powerful and complimentary forces: White liberal guilt and fear of retaliation.

The first is ease to understand. Western politicians pretty much admit that foreign aid is an apology for the actual and imagined crimes of European imperialism. That Canada never had any colonies is a point overlooked. It's the White Man's burden without Kipling's careful realism. The second element is less well understood. Most western voters don't imagine that tin pot African leaders are much of a threat to them. Too far away and too weak. Most Canadian voters think about the aboriginals in much the same way. Harmless victims in colourful costumes. 

As the current crisis in Libya is demonstrating to the world such tin pot regimes can be quite dangerous. Why are Britain and France so eager to control the situation in that thinly populated stretch of North African nothing? Well there is oil. That's always a useful thing. But there is oil in a lot of places. Many of those places are not run by tyrants quite as nutty as the Colonel. No, the real reason is that Libya is the cork in the bottle of sub-Saharan Africa. A full collapse of the Libyan state might send millions of black Africans rushing into Europe. That would destroy whatever is left of the European welfare state and likely spark race riots.

For Canadians - at least those paying attention - our Libyan crisis occurred five years ago in Caledonia. It was warning sign and a dangerous precedent. A group of militant aboriginals - acting with or without the sanction of their reserve's government - essentially seized control of a swath of Canadian suburbia. The militants succeeded brilliantly. This may inspire similar incidents in the future, or may even prevent them. Canadian politicians are an unusually spineless lot. The mere threat of another Caledonia may simply force a political cave-in to aboriginal demands without actual violence being necessary.

This makes the cause of actual reform on aboriginal reserves that much more difficult. What Canadian politician is going to risk taking on the racial grievance mongers, tribal militants and liberal self-flagellators in the MSM and push for accountable government?  The McGuinty government's appeasement of the Caledonia Crisis has ensured that money will continue to flow to these tribal ghettos. It will cost the average Canadian perhaps a few hundred more dollars a year on their tax bill. It will cost the aboriginals trapped in these reserve far more. Another generation of corruption, violence and janitors substituting as a medical technicians.

 

Poor Little Commissioner

The Minister for Caledonia is having a rough time:

Fantino, 68 and a parliamentary rookie, says he “worked diligently and paid my dues for 40 odd years” before deciding to run for the Conservatives and scoop up a former Liberal riding.

“The other thing that grabs me is the immunity from accountability in the House,” he continues. “I’ve been called a few things and they’ve got protection. I’ve always found that kind of strange.

“It seems people in there can decimate your integrity, trample your good name, call you every awful name, accuse you of the most heinous things — and they do it with a straight face.”

Adds Fantino: “They put all the ‘appropriate’ anger and show business stuff into it — Hollywood, really — and it’s widely reported on television, with everybody (having access to it) and yet it’s protected.”

Takes one to know one. Julian Fantino is one of the most superb actors in Canadian public life. No one does outraged innocence like the former OPP commissioner. Speaking of decimating people's integrity without consequences, here is what Minister Fantino had to say about Caledonia activist Gary McHale:

"Much of the conflict, confrontation and provocation has occurred during the times that Mr Gary McHale and his followers have converged on on Caledonia that invariably resulted in heightened tensions and conflict that required an extraordinary deployment of police resources in our efforts to preserve the peace."

(Pg 210, Helpless by Christie Blatchford)

The then commissioner was referring to an incident in which aboriginal activist Clyde Powless was charged and convicted of assaulting Gary McHale. The latter was exercising his constitutional right to protest the unequal enforcement of the law in Caledonia. Yet Julian Fantino had no problem siding with the aggressor in that incident and blaming the victim. Minister, heal thy self.

Then all of a sudden they treat you like a common criminal.

Oh yes, minister. That's how many of the residents of Caledonia felt for many years. All those years you were Commissioner of the OPP. Any thought for them?

If we still possessed in this country a genuine opposition, every Question Period from now until Julian Fantino leaves the House would be filled with questions on Caledonia. How hard is it to ask why the Minister, in his former capacity, failed to maintain law and order in one part of rural Ontario? How can the Minister protect Canadian seniors when be failed to protect them in Caledonia?

Why does Jack Layton, who postures endlessly about protecting the common man, do nothing to attack Fantino's record as OPP Commissioner? Is there anything that demonstrates Stephen Harper's unfitness for office better than his selection of Fantino for a portfolio? Yet Michael Ignatieff is silent. Are these so called defenders of democracy so afraid, so completely cowed, by the shrill charge of racism than hangs about the Caledonia travesty? 

The entry of Julian Fantino into the House of Commons is an open moral crime. This is man who should have been cashiered from his post as Commissioner. Who should today be facing a parliamentary inquiry for his inactions in Caledonia, yet is hailed by even the Toronto Star as "one tough cop." When real toughness was required he was anything but. These are facts. We would not let a bankrupt become Minister of Finance. We would never allow a felon to be made Attorney General. Why is a police officer who did not discharge his duty, when conscience and law obliged him to do so, sitting in the federal cabinet?

It is likely we will never be able to firmly establish that the government of Dalton McGuinty directly ordered, or influenced, Commissioner Fantino to abdicate police responsibility in Caledonia. There is no firm proof of this and we will likely never find a smoking gun. Instead we are left with questions that suggest certain answers.

Had a similar outbreak of lawlessness occurred anywhere else in Ontario, and the race of the participants been different, the laws of this province would almost certainly have been enforced. They were not in Caledonia. This is a vast omission. Julian Fantino has the reputation of being a tireless pursuer of criminals. Yet certain criminals of a certain race, in one part of his jurisdiction, were not pursued. His political masters had risen to power attacking the alleged racial callousness of the Mike Harris government. The ghost of Dudley George was at Caledonia. Is it not conceivable that they were too anxious to avoid a repeat of the Ipperwash fiasco?

Are we so afraid of these broad omissions, these very uncomfortable facts, that we will allow the rule of law to be openly flouted? Is the Cult of Multi Cult so important it is worth sacrificing Peace, Order and Good Government?

Caledonia: Blatchford on The Agenda

UPDATE: Mark Vandermaas has further updates.

Julian Fantino: The Minister for Caledonia

Well, look who showed up in Stephen Harper's cabinet last week:

Former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner Julian Fantino, who narrowly won the GTA seat of Vaughan for the Tories just five weeks ago, was handed the junior cabinet post of Minister of State for Seniors.

[…]

The seniors portfolio gives Mr. Fantino a high-profile perch from which to address older Canadians, who tend to be among the most active voters in federal politics.

“Canada’s seniors will be in good hands, thanks to the experience he has accumulated and the judgment he has demonstrated over his long and illustrious career of public service,” Mr. Harper said of the former officer of the law.

Well perhaps not all seniors.

Take the case of Kathe and Guenter Golke, a couple in their late sixties who drove past the disputed Douglas Creek Estate, near Caledonia, in June of 2006. Their country pleasure drive provoked the wrath of some of the occupiers, who chased them to the parking lot of a local Canadian Tire Store.

An OPP officer took the couple into his cruiser for protection, and later to a police substation. Guenter Golke, a diabetic, was soon after transferred to a hospital for an irregular heart beat. The couple's car was stolen - likely in the presence of OPP officers - by some of the occupiers and taken for a joy ride. The car was returned to the Golkes two days later, with some three thousand dollars in damage. No one has been charged with the theft.

This is just one of the stories documented in Christie Blatchford's book Helpless. It is one of many incidents during the Caledonia Crisis when Canadian seniors, and Caledonia residents of all ages, were abandoned by the OPP. 

Julian Fantino became OPP Commissioner in October of 2006, months after the Golke's ordeal. This was not, however, an isolated car theft, beneath the attention of an OPP Commissioner. Nor was it a bit of adolescent carousing gone too far. Within the context of the Caledonia Crisis, it was a brazen act of anarchy.

The occupiers of the Douglas Creek Estates were testing the resolve of the OPP and found it wanting. While an attempted flag raising provoked the wrath of Julian Fantino, the attack on Kathe and Guenter Golke seems to have escaped his notice. The assaults on the home of Dave Brown and Dana Chatwell, which did take place during his tenure as Commissioner, attracted little of his time or attention.

This is the man Stephen Harper has chosen to represent Canada's seniors at the cabinet table. When real Canadian seniors were in harm's way, Julian Fantino placed politics above policing. When Caledonia's children were threatened, Julian Fantino did not act. When his duty demanded that he enforce the laws of Canada, he failed to act. This has been documented in news reports stretching back over more than four years. It has been documented in footage shot by local television stations. The events have been carefully shifted by Christie Blatchford in her book Helpless.

Perhaps the greatest scandal of the Caledonia Crisis is not the hypocrisy of our political class (which is to be expected), or the failure of will on the part of the upper branches of the OPP, but the media's dereliction of duty. We are solemnly told, most often by journalists themselves, that they have a duty to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." They declare themselves the conscience of the nation and watchdog of the state. 

The recent appointment of Julian Fantino to Cabinet has generated little mention of Caledonia. Instead there have been exhaustive discussions of the appointment's political implications. Many are hailing the appointment as a decisive step in the Prime Minister's quest for a majority government. A dozen more seats will give him, and his party, the power they've sought for two decades. 

Perhaps Stephen Harper will succeed in winning his majority. If he does, it will be due to the ignorance of the Canadian people. Our corps of investigative journalists, always ready to chase down a crooked used car dealer, seem completely uninterested in how a top level police officer, now a minister of state, failed to do his job.

Omissions of this kind are never accidental. Instead of outraged editorials about Fantino's Caledonia record, we are treated to semi-coherent ramblings about how the new minister is unlikely to mandate ground floor washrooms in new homes. Had the current Canadian MSM been around in the spring of 1940, they would have been filling detailed stories on how the Blitzkrieg was adversely impacting the wildlife of northwestern Europe, with a small line item about the fall of Paris.

Had the people of Vaughan been fully aware of Julian Fantino's conduct as OPP Commissioner, it's almost certain he would have remained a private citizen. The journalists of another era would have shown their readers the extent of the Caledonia tragedy. The people of Vaughan have remained in ignorance and so Fantino now sits in Cabinet, a useful political prop for the ambitions of an opportunistic Prime Minister.

There is a Caledonia Conspiracy. It is not a conspiracy of business suited men in back rooms, which would long ago have been exposed. It is an example of the most powerful type of conspiracy, that of ideas. Just as the OPP's two-tier policing was a product of reverse-racism, so too has been the two-tier reporting of Caledonia.

There have been honourable exceptions to this silence. But far too few. If Canada's journalists are unwilling to find and fight for the truth, even at the expense of questioning their own politically correct assumptions, Douglas Creek Estates will be only the beginning. There will be many more Caledonias, and many more Julian Fantinos. 

 

Julian and the Victims

Mr Fantino goes to Ottawa:

"I think we tend to minimize the impact of crime," said Fantino, who enters politics after 40 years as a police officer.

"I have never had any tolerance whatsoever for crime, to begin with. And also, I have never been able to overlook the victimization that's involved. We can talk about statistics, we can banter around, we can say it's up, it's down, it's sideways, but I've had to deal with real victims. I've had to deal with the real gnawing consequences: the trauma, the tragedy of crimes -- especially violent crime, at its very core."

Fantino said it's this direct experience on the front lines that gives him special insight into the criminal justice issues that are hotly debated in the House.

I don't know how Julian Fantino sleeps at night. To utter those words, while having been OPP Commissioner during the worst of the Caledonia Crisis, requires a cognitive disconnect that beggars imagination. It's the sort of double think we expect from politicians, but a police officer? The former head of the second largest force in Canada?

Regular readers will know that I have a very low opinion of elected officials. Most would - metaphorically - throw their own mothers under the bus for a few dozen votes. The typical celebrity would do much the same for face time on national television. There is something about fame and media attention that attracts the worst elements of human nature. 

Despite my civil libertarian polemics, I have enough regard for Canadian police officers to believe that, in truly dangerous situations, most would risk their lives to protect the public. Issuing speeding tickets to meet a quota, or roughing up a violent thug, are small beer compared with the serious crimes that threaten peaceful life in Canada: murder, rape, arson, theft, arson, assault and riot. We employ the police, mainly, to protect peaceful and civilized human beings from the violent in our midst. When an officer fails in that task, he does more than fail to do his job, he violates a sacred trust. 

With that in mind, I'd like to highlight this bit from the ex-Commissioner's panegyric to his own career:

We can talk about statistics, we can banter around, we can say it's up, it's down, it's sideways, but I've had to deal with real victims. I've had to deal with the real gnawing consequences: the trauma, the tragedy of crimes -- especially violent crime, at its very core."

As has been established, Mr Fantino has a flare for the histrionic. He seriously compared his by-election campaign in Vaughan to facing violent criminals. Typically politicians develop this easy abuse of the English language after some years of active campaigning. Then again, it's arguable that Julian Fantino - who has not served as a beat cop in over twenty years - has been a politician in uniform for some time now. Perhaps words have lost their meeting to the former head of the OPP.

Speaking of victims, here is one victim that Julian Fantino did not have the courage to meet, Pam ‘Dancer’ Dudych. Pam is a teenager living in Caledonia whose life became a living hell after the occupation of the Douglas Creek Estate. She described her daily existence in a school project thusly:

You can’t call the police because they can’t help you. You’re locked in your own home. A few days later, when it calms down, you have to go to school. But you can’t get to school by bus anymore so you have to drive a 30 min. ride to school when it only took 2 minutes unless you wen’t through the blockade. But you could only do this if you had a pass, but even when we got one, it was whether they felt like letting you go through or not. If they did let you go, it was like you’re in prison, gates everywhere, men with masks over their faces only to see their eyes. Men holding bats some even with guns, it was a living hell. I had to live through that. You don’t know what life is like until you have lived through it.

“I’m a competitive dancer, and love to dance outside on the side lawn, but I wasn’t able to unless I could take the pressure of getting stares or firecrackers thrown at me. Now I take medication and go to counselling because of all of this. A 14 year old should not be doing that! 

in 2009 Haldiman Mayor Marie Trainer - one of the few public officials to conduct themselves honourably during the Crisis - asked then Commissioner Fantino to meet with Pam and her family, as well as Dave and Dana Brown (who later won a settlement against the Ontario government). Fantino said he was too busy.

Fantino, however, had plenty of time to meet with Clyde Powless, the aboriginal activist charged with attacking Gary McHale during an initially peaceful protest. Fantino even wrote an e-mail, used as a character reference at Powless' assault trial, praising the activist for helping to lower tensions during Douglas Creek Estate stand off. The e-mail laid much of the blame for McHale's assault on McHale himself. 

"Much of the conflict, confrontation and provocation has occurred during the times that Mr Gary McHale and his followers have converged on on Caledonia that invariably resulted in heightened tensions and conflict that required an extraordinary deployment of police resources in our efforts to preserve the peace."

(Pg 210, Helpless by Christie Blatchford)

Blaming the victim is not the sort of thing that someone concerned with victims' rights - to say nothing of a police officer in the line of duty - should be doing. As Commissioner, Julian Fantino showed concerned only for some victims, those to whom the display of justice and compassion was politically expedient. In making excuses for Powless' criminal actions, Fantino sounded like a bleeding heart judge, pleading that the poor thug was a victim of circumstances. Talk about hug-thug politics. 

When faced with real victims of real crime, Julian Fantino turned his back. He talks the talk, but when bad PR loomed, he failed to walk the walk. 

Now ensconced as MP for Vaughan, Fantino has become Stephen Harper's prized candidate. Mr Law and Order for a Law and Order Party. In a different age, it would be almost certain that the Liberal Opposition would hound Fantino for Caledonia. But today, or in the immediate future, they will not. Politically correct to the bone, the Grits will never raise the issue of how anarchy took hold in rural Ontario, just outside of one Canada's largest cities. None dare risk the charge of racism.

Shame on the media for their cowardice. Shame on the Opposition for their dereliction of duty. Shame on Julian Fantino. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Desperate Men: Julian, Stephen and Justin

Cry him a river:

For 30 days Julian Fantino held his tongue, campaigning as the Conservative candidate in the suburban Toronto riding of Vaughan, surviving on pizza and trying to ignore the Liberal attacks.

He had vowed to take the high road during his campaign – and he did.

“It was difficult, if you will, to maintain that focus because it did get quite personal, quite nasty and ugly,” he said during an interview this week.

Almost like he was under siege. The normal rules of life just weren't being obeyed, and no one was helping out. Thankfully Julian just kept his mouth shut and everything turned out fine, for him anyway. Sound familiar?

He asserts the Liberals were “desperate” but that he would rather have “faced dangerous people with loaded guns than some of the nonsense” during the campaign.

So the take away from this is that the former commissioner, while physically brave, is thin-skinned when it comes to personal attacks. I'm sure he'll do fine in Ottawa. The histrionic wordplay should also stand him in good stead in our nation's capital.

“I am driven by three things: I know who I am; I know what I’m here to do and I know who I’m here to serve. All this other stuff is just noise, distraction and I am not going to be distracted by what I have to do and what the people of Vaughan have entrusted me to do. They can play their silly games all they want but, you know, sticks and stones …”

Except for one name that the former commissioner was desperate to escape during the campaign: Caledonia. Last week I wrote about how Julian Fantino's by-election is a battle in a long-war against the Harper Tories.

Having long ago abandoned the pretence of being financially conservative, the Conservative Party has, in its promotion of Julian Fantino's political career, destroyed their credibility on law and order. Yet this is only the latest in a series of incidents that show that the Conservatives are not serious about protecting Canadians. Rather than offering an agenda that focuses on fighting violent criminals, they instead target petty fraudsters and perpetrators of victimless "crimes," while dismantling effective rehabilitation strategies. When faced with a challenged to Canada's archaic prostitution laws, the Prime Minister could only crack bad jokes. 

After the amateur stand-up, Stephen Harper went on to say that prostitution is "bad for society." I'm sure it is. There are many things which are bad for society. Governments, especially ones as financially strained as ours, need to prioritize.

Hassling the desperate and pathetic, however immoral their actions, is a waste of police resources. What consenting adults do out of sight of the rest of us is their concern. It isn't so much that most Canadians want to keep prostitution illegal, it's that they want it kept away from their families and neighbourhoods. Municipal ordinances can accomplish the same end, but that would not allow the Prime Minister to grandstand as a defender of Canadian decency.

What the Harper Tories are offering Canadians, despite the howling from the paranoid Left, is not conservatism, but it's opposite, a sort of kitsch conservatism. Instead of the real deal, we get an imitation so cheap and shabby it insults the original.

Rather than bringing into a government a real cop, willing to take on judges who play amateur sociologist, we get a politician in uniform, who looked the other way as the rule of law was subverted in rural Canada. Instead of fighting real criminals, we get crusades against petty hustlers, gamblers and whores. This isn't puritanism - the puritans believed the law should be applied equally - but political sleight of hand. See how hard we are cracking down on crime? Belying the rhetoric, real action is needed to overhaul our courts and prisons.

The Prime Minister faces no real opposition. Both Michael Ignatieff and Justin Trudeau are afraid of touching Caledonia, or challenging the Tory's potemkin village of law and order. Any criticism of the so-called crack down on petty offenders, for nonsensical crimes, would immediately get the Grit leader targeted as a "hug-thug" politician. A silly bit of mud slinging that Julian Fantino directed at Justin Trudeau last week. It was a response to the son of the former Prime Minister's over the top attack on Fantino, based on the former commissioner's criticisms of the Charter of Rights. Both Fantino and Trudeau, however, remained silent on Caledonia through out the campaign. 

In modern politics even the most trivial of indiscretions is quickly transformed into a scandal, with the inevitable "gate" suffix soon appended. There is no Caledoniagate. That is the scandal. Recruiting a law and order candidate who didn't uphold the laws should be as laughable as a finance minister who has filed for bankruptcy. The latter would never happen, because it would be bad optics. The former is happening for the same reason.

The impeccably liberal Justin Trudeau, the Crown Prince of Grits, is not going to take on a cause that might have him branded as a racist. The nominally conservative Stephen Harper, who is presumed to be a bigot by many simply because of his party label, is definitely not going to risk the charge of racism. This has allowed the real racists of the Caledonia tragedy to go unpunished, those who have exploited the two-tier policing of the occupied lands to their own ends. The near silence from our political class, and the media, is the biggest scandal in Canada today.