Since I’ve been complaining about our national myopia on matters of economic growth and productivity, let me give you a timely example. Consider two fresh news items pegged to an announcement of quarterly financials by the supermarket giant Loblaw: one for Yahoo written by Financial Post alumna Alicja Siekerska, and one for the CBC by Sophia Harris.
“I am really, really concerned about the escalation of violence in our city, particularly the violent incidents that we have experienced, whether close to the Belvedere LRT station, or the random shooting that took place in the west end.”
That’s how Mayor Amarjeet Sohi summed up his concern two weeks ago after occupants in a luxury car engaged in three separate shootings in our city on July 15 and after 52-year-old Rukinisha Nkundabatware was murdered in a random stabbing at the Belvedere LRT station the previous week on July 9.
A secret criminal trial in Ontario in which the identities of the judge, lawyers and accused were all concealed from the public is the latest in a series of undisclosed or confidential court hearings to be revealed in Canada in the past year and a half.
The secrecy extends to where the alleged crimes occurred, what they were and what police agency investigated them. Not only are the files sealed, even the docket number is a secret. The level of court at which the trial was held has not been publicly specified.
John and Nisha Whitehead over at The Rutherford Institute always write compelling essays documenting America’s descent toward tyranny. “A State of Martial Law: America Is a Military Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy” is no exception and deserves reading.
In that essay, the legal duo reminded me of something John Lennon once warned: “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you — pull your beard, flick your face — to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”
Five hundred and ten days ago just after midnight on February 14, 2022 – heavily armed RCMP squads raided three trailer-homes in the border town of Coutts, Alberta and started arresting people for Conspiracy to Murder Police Officers in Support of a Plot to Overthrow the Government during the Freedom Convoy protests in Alberta.
After a series of court appearances, four men remain in jail – denied bail for reasons of… well, we don’t know why they were denied bail. A court order prohibits publishing most details of the ongoing case and hearings.
Going Live Soon – 8am ET
Join @JasonLavigneMP and me as we discover the conditions in the remand jails where the #Coutts4 are waking to day 501.
I know from personal experience that #SolitaryConfinement is torture. Some of the #CouttsFour are in solitary. I want to know more. https://t.co/LhYlvNyVhp
— DonaldBest.CA * IT ENDS WHEN WE DO NOT COMPLY (@DonaldBestCA) June 29, 2023
A stoic Daniel Penny pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges in a packed Manhattan courtroom Wednesday morning for the chokehold death of homeless man Jordan Neely.
The 24-year-old former Marine — who appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court clean-shaven and wearing a blue suit and maroon tie — was arraigned on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide during the brief, minutes-long hearing.
Canadians of all ages and walks of life are fed up with the status quo on how their governments are responding to spiking rates of crime and addiction, according to a wide-ranging new Leger poll commissioned by Postmedia.
On everything from bail to involuntary addiction treatment to the decriminalization of drugs, Canadian public opinion was found to be almost entirely at odds with the priorities being championed by provincial and federal governments.
Canadians have been falling victim to unprovoked stranger attacks with increasing frequency—in the middle of the day, in stores, or walking down the street. A man in London, Ontario, was even stabbed while sitting in his car waiting for a train to pass.
Some say Canada’s growing drug problem is to blame, with drug-induced psychosis sending addicts on violent rampages. Others say the problem is a lax criminal justice system that allows the most violent to repeatedly offend.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Wednesday that Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino should resign over his handling of convicted killer Paul Bernardo’s controversial prison transfer.
CBC News reported Tuesday that Mendicino’s office knew for months that one of Canada’s most high-profile murderers would be moved by Correctional Service Canada (CSC) to a medium-security institution.
A man who brutally attacked a mother outside her children’s daycare will serve four years in prison instead of nine years after Alberta’s top court found a judge failed to properly assess how the accused’s Indigenous background affected his level of culpability.
He was Indigenous? Well in that case Mom had it comin.
h/t Lesley
The body count in recent months has been grim and frightening.
Reported crime on Toronto’s transit system increased to more than 1,000 incidents in 2022, up 60 per cent since 2019, even while ridership has declined 30 per cent.
And this was before 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes was stabbed to death at a TTC subway station by an unhoused man with many assault convictions who was on probation. It was the fourth homicide on the transit system in less than a year. Nationally, nine police officers have been killed in the line of duty over the same time period.
May cause a rise in blood pressure.
The federal government is proposing changes to the country’s bail system that would make it harder for those accused of certain offences to be released on bail.
Bill C-48 would amend the Criminal Code so that those charged with a serious violent offence involving a weapon — one with a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment — who were convicted of a similar offence within the last five years will face a reverse onus to get bail.
“Reverse onus” means the accused would have to show why they should be released instead of the prosecution having to prove that they should remain behind bars.
Daniel Penny, the Marine facing a manslaughter charge in the subway chokehold killing of Jordan Neely, is being “railroaded,” outraged friends and family told The Post Saturday.
Loved ones are angry at the rush to judgment over Neely’s death and those who have branded Penny a “murderer” for the May 1 incident on a Manhattan subway train.
Equality under the law is the cornerstone of liberal democracy. But judges across the country are now factoring race into sentencing.
Edward Smith didn’t think the color of his skin had anything to do with it.
He was 23, and he’d come to Canada in 2005 from West Africa. Now, he lived with his mother and sister in Edmonton, the capital of the western province of Alberta.
Racism—overt or systemic—didn’t make him take part in an armed robbery of an Airbnb in July 2019, he said. He’d decided on his own to help his cousin, who had told Smith that the people staying at the Airbnb had robbed him and that he was trying to get his money back. Smith agreed to help, but he didn’t want any guns involved. So they compromised: they’d bring a gun, but it would be unloaded.
