Saturday, September 29, 2012

Omar Khadr has returned to Canada. Now what?

Omar Khadr has returned to Canada.

He arrived at CFB Trenton on a US Military aircraft and was turned over to Corrections Canada and taken to Millhaven prison.

Now what?

My personal opinion is that now he has claimed his right as a Canadian citizen to return to his country after serving his sentence, that he must now accept his obligations as a citizen of Canada and face Canadian law.

Specifically: Section 46-1 b,c of the Criminal Code of Canada.

Every one commits high treason who, in Canada,

  • (b) levies war against Canada or does any act preparatory thereto; or
  • (c) assists an enemy at war with Canada, or any armed forces against whom Canadian Forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between Canada and the country whose forces they are.

If Omar Khadr's crime(s) are not a text book example of treason, what would be?



Friday, September 21, 2012

Cover up at Alberta Health Services?

Alberta Health Services is not going ahead with the 3rd party audit announced by CEO Chris Eagle on August 21st into the expenses of executives of the old Capital Health regional board. This was in addition to the audit announced in early August into the expenses of Alluden Merali.

Calgary Herald: "The Alberta Health Services board has limited a third-party audit of expenses to the spending of its former finance boss Allaudin Merali — reversing a directive from the medical authority’s president last month widening the probe to other Edmonton health executive." And The Calgary Sun said as much last week.

Here is what Eagle said on August 21st on the expanded audit:
“We wanted to make sure that we were going to do a review that is reasonably complete,” Eagle said.
“There’s so much concern around the level of expenses, I think we really need to make sure that things were done in the proper way. . . . I think the public really expects we check and double check this.
 So what changed? Is a smaller audit more "reasonably complete" than the expanded audit?  No.  Has the 'level of concern' gone down? No.  Were things done in a 'proper way'? We have no way of knowing without the expanded audit. Has the public changed their expectations?  A big NO!

So why than are AHS dropping the idea of an expanded audit? I don't know for sure but I may just have an explanation, and it is not pretty.

The spin from AHS and the Redford government is that they are focused on the future and not the past, particularly before the formation of AHS who claim to have put new procedures in place to curb these expense account 'issues'. Which does seem reasonable on a certain level as 'they' were not responsible for what went on before AHS was formed; except that that the top level of AHS is made up of many of those same people who DID allow improper expense spending to occur under their watch and were being reimbursed for their own expenses during this time. An audit is still needed.

And what about after AHS was formed? We already have seen an example of improper spending during this time when the expenses of the very same Chris Eagle were exposed under FOIP and it was revealed that he  claimed airfare and ground transportation to attend an April 2011 premier's dinner in Calgary. A big no no under the NEW AHS guidelines and also provincial law, and if one improper claim made it through the new AHS rules, who is to say that others didn't as well? An audit is still needed.

Oh, and who was it that signed off on Eagle's expense claim for that premier's dinner?  None other than Ken Hughes, chair of the AHS superboard at the time and current Minister of Energy in the Redford government. 

Any audit of AHS spending would be sure to implicate him further and lets face it; family members don't go around auditing other family members. In case you were wondering about the 'family members' line came from it refers to comments made by Alberta Ethics Commissioner Neil Wilkinson about the hiring of defeated PC MLA Even Berger by the PC's into a government job in spite of conflict of interest rules.

Oh, and Neil Wilkinson was also the Chair of the old Capital Health Board and would have had HIS expenses audited under that announced and now cancelled expanded audit.

Weird coincidence isn't it?

If it walks like a cover up duck...


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Thank you, Premier Lougheed.

Peter Lougheed, the 10th premier of Alberta serving from 1971-1985, has passed away at the age of 84.


Thank you, Premier Lougheed.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Quebec shooter has 21 "registered" firearms. How did the Crown know this?

"Prosecuting lawyers said that police seized five weapons at the scene and 17 others at Bain's home. Every one of the weapons — 21 of 22 — were registered, the Crown said."

If the long gun registry has been shut down and the data no longer accessible, how did the Crown or the police find out that 21 of these guns were registered? ( The data still exists as there currently is a court case in Quebec challenging the governments right to destroy the data, BUT this data is no longer accessible.)


Possible scenarios:
All 21 were restricted and that data is still available. (This is possible but unlikely that all 21 would be restricted, including the AK 47 knockoff (not restricted) we have all seen in the photos)

When they raided his residence, they found all the registry paper work on the guns.(Also possible.)

Someone has saved the (old and outdated) data are continue to access it!  < this is disturbing on a couple of levels not of which is the legality of keeping private data that was protected under privacy law amongst other legislation.



It is too early yet to know how it was known that the shooter was the registered owner of 21 firearms, but if it turns out that some local police or other government agency has indeed kept this data and created their own data base, I suspect this is going to to give those worried about the registry being restored at sometime in the future a great deal of evidence to justify those concerns. Not to mention the legal liability to those who are in possession of private data they are NOT entitled to posses.