Tag Archives: crime

Support Edouard Maurice

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UPDATE:

The rally in support of the Maurice family will be held at the Okotoks courthouse on Friday, March 9 at 9am. A map to the location is below and some more details can be found at the facebook event page linked here.

Along with the account and email address below, a “fundrayzr” page has been set up for the Maurice family as well. Click here. 

 

 

Edouard (Eddie) Maurice of the Okotoks area is facing three charges of aggravated assault along with firearm charges due to an event that happened on his property early in the morning of Saturday February 24.

As has become an unfortunate trend in Canada, the victim is treated as the criminal should they choose to defend their family and property from intruders.

Defending one’s property and family should not lead to imprisonment and possible bankruptcy.

While Maurice’s case works through the court system, a great deal of financial and emotional pressure will be placed on Maurice and his family. Legal fees and living expenses will become acute as time is consumed with his defense.

That is why friends and supporters are raising funds to ease these burdens on the Maurice family in the months to come in a trust fund.

A trust account at TD Bank has been set up by Travis Dunn (family friend) which will gather and hold funds on behalf of Maurice.

Donations can be made to any branch of TD to account number 8079-6142303 and e transfers can be sent to helpeddiemaurice@gmail.com

A rally is being organized to show support for Eddie Maurice on the morning of Friday March 9 at the Okotoks court house where Maurice will be appearing that day. I will add details for the rally as I get them.

Financial support is welcome and critical.

Showing support through the rally and online helps too. We need to let the Maurice family know that fellow Albertans will stand by them even if the “justice” system may not.

Rural Albertans are tired of being victimized by criminals and being victimized by the system when they try to defend themselves. Rural crime rates are exploding and people can’t be expected to wait up to 40 minutes for aid to arrive. Self-defense of family and property is essential.

Please consider sending some funds to help the Maurice family and try to find time to come to the rally. This is so important to the Maurice family and all of us.

Good intent is nice but we have to look at outcomes.

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One thing we love to do collectively as Canadians is to bury our heads in the sand when we don’t like the realities of issues and policies around us. We implement simplistic feel-good policies that may have the best of intentions and viciously protect these policies from all attempts by people who may want to inject a dose of reality into them. If somebody dares to question these flakey policies, inevitably they will be accused of supporting whatever ill these policies were created to ease.

I will start by laying out the vapid and inevitable response I will get for touching on the issue of native incarceration rates:

Oh so you are OK with the gross over representation of natives in our prisons!

There. Now I will begin by responding that I am indeed not at all happy with the disproportionate number of natives incarcerated in Canada. What I am even more unhappy about is our continued support of countless initiatives in alternative sentencing based on race when they are so clearly a catastrophic failure.

Since the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples wrapped up nearly 20 years ago, our justice system has been scrambling to find ways to reduce the aboriginal incarceration rate in Canada. All sorts of resources and time have been directed towards training judges and instructing them directly to take “indianess”: into account when sentencing. “Sentencing circles” have been created for natives to try and avoid conventional courts. Countless healing lodges have been opened and maintained throughout Canada.

“Gladue” reports are brought into court to try to find every possible way to avoid sentencing natives to jail.

Despite all of these efforts to avoid sentencing natives to jail; Aboriginal incarceration rates have doubled in the last 20 years! While natives make up about 4% of Canada’s population, they currently make up over 23% of our prison population.

The image below from Statistics Canada rather starkly lays out just how badly all of these initiatives are failing. How colossal must a legislative failure get before we re-examine the base principles of the legislation?

abincarc

 

Yes, we must examine and address the issue of aboriginal incarceration in Canada. I think we can pretty clearly conclude at this point though that the issue is not in our courts or sentencing. To reach that conclusion though a person does have to set aside the intent of those policies and look objectively at how they are doing.

Race based policy is what led to the separated, miserable and dysfunctional native cultures in Canada. Despite that hard reality, people still insist on trying to fix this problem with even more race based policy. As has been covered here before: the reserve system is a failure by every possible measure! Crime is certainly no exception among these measures.

The reason that such a higher number of natives end up in our prisons is not that our courts are sentencing natives incorrectly, it is that natives are committing a disproportionately higher number of crimes in Canada. That is an ugly reality to face but it has to be done if we ever hope to solve some of these issues.

We must look deeper than our court system. When a native finds him/herself before a judge, the damage has already been done. What we need to look at is what drives such a high number of natives to crime. When we look at things that way, things get more simple yet complex at the same time.

The cause of the problem is actually very simple. Canada has a system of entrenched racial apartheid in reserves that is fostered and served by the racist Indian Act. As long as we keep people separated physically and legislatively from the rest of the world based on race, we will have the culture of misery and dependency that we see now. Crime is simply one of the many issues erupting from this sick system.

The solution is more complex. The reserve system and the Indian Act must both be abolished. To get there we need more people to pay attention to the devastation that our system of apartheid is creating and we need people prepared to battle the entrenched parasites in the Indian Industry who will fight tooth and nail to protect their self-interest in the system. The Indian Industry is loaded with high-level bureaucrats, scads of lawyers and countless “consultants” who bleed millions and millions from the entire native system. These people will not let their lucrative schemes built on the backs of natives go easily. Cries of racism, lawsuits and idiotic “scholarly” papers will be released in hopes of maintaining this status quo of native misery. It will take some tough legislators to face that down but it must happen eventually.

We need to look at all of our laws and systems with a critical eye. Set aside the intent that built these institutions and ask yourself: “is this working?”. When it comes to native affairs, most often the answer is a resounding “no”. Once we stop with the clearly proven failures in policy, we may have a chance to work towards some policy that actually works.

Good intent is nice but it really doesn’t get us anywhere on it’s own.

By every measure the Canadian reserve system is an abject failure.

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For decades Canada has been doing everything possible to try and repair the grossly broken native reserve system. Every year expenditures directed to reserves are increased by all levels of government. Veritable armies of consultants are sent to reserves to improve conditions. Summits, conferences and special events are held constantly trying to address challenges on reserves in Canada and academics churn out endless long-winded but hollow papers expounding on how reserves are essential to the well being of natives in Canada.

Despite all of these efforts, the socioeconomic misery of native reserves continues and is actually growing worse. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in misery on these race based enclaves with utterly no sign of relief in sight.

When will it be time to face reality and accept that the reserve system itself is a total failure? How much more time will we let pass before coming to this general realization? How much more suffering has to happen?

One of the main things that has neutered politicians and the press alike has been the tactic utilized by people invested in the status quo of labelling all who criticize the system as racists. The tactic has now been so overused that it really is beginning to lose effect. True native leaders are beginning to surface and seek systemic change and self-serving activists like Pam Palmater & Theresa Spence are finding themselves delegated to the sidelines due to their own extremism

I am going to list the stats below that clearly demonstrate the catastrophic failure in the system. It is not racist to do this. I am not claiming these stats are like this because of the shortcomings of a race. These stats are like this due to people living in the apartheid system of racial segregation that we call reserves. Any race would be dysfunctional in the circumstances that reserve-born people find themselves in under the Indian Act.

Please look at those stats and honestly try to think to yourself how any of them will change in the current system. We can do some things to ease these issues, but as long as we have a separate class of people segregated racially and living under different set of laws, these conditions simply will not change.

 

The stats below came from here.

 HEALTH

Healthcare is always a dominant issue in Canadian politics. It is cliché but true that if you don’t have your health, you truly have nothing. While supporters of the status quo love to quote a discredited study showing apparent increased cancer rates among natives near oilsands areas, they neglect to mention that natives on reserves suffer from higher cancer rates on pretty much every reserve in Canada due to lifestyles that create health problems.

Teams are sent to reserves and health education programs tailored to on-reserve natives are myriad. Despite that, the health issues and challenges faced by reserve dwelling natives are untenable.

While over 76% of Canadians are non-smokers now, only 41% of natives on reserve are non smokers.One doesn’t need to be a doctor to see how this increases cases of cancer on reserves.

Drinking and other substance abuses are well above and beyond those suffered by off-reserve citizens.

Obesity rates are more than double that of off-reserve Canadians. This leads to all sorts of complications such as diabetes and heart disease.

Suicide rates among native youth are 5-6 times that of non-native youth.

All of these factors among others lead to a general and unacceptable gap in life expectancies between natives and non-natives.

In 2000, life expectancy at birth for the Registered Indian population was estimated at 68.9 years for males and 76.6 years for females. This reflects differences of 8.1 years and 5.5 years, respectively, from the 2001 Canadian population’s life expectancies.

Many health issues are related to the overwhelming poverty of residents of reserves.

Housing and poverty 

Housing is a chronic issue on native reserves and I have written on why it will never improve in the current system here.

Members of the Indian Industry and others who personally benefit from the current system keep insisting that if we simply increase expenditures on housing that problems will end. That has been proven wrong so many times that it is depressingly laughable. The capacity to absorb resources for housing on reserves is infinite.

Davis Inlet was a perfect and prime example. Like so many reserves, Davis Inlet hit the wall and hit an untenable wall of substance abuse and housing shortcomings. At a cost of $200 million the entire community of a few hundred people was moved to a brand new location.  Despite that move, the issues remain and continue in the town’s new location. It is the system, not the lack of expenditures that is destroying these people!

Native housing falls below normal standards by every measure.

Sewage, water and emergency services all fall short on reserves despite money spent as well.

Generating local taxes on reserves is one idea but with the appalling differential in income between on and off reserve natives, it simply will not work. The money is not there.

Education 

Education is often and correctly pointed out as a means to ease native poverty. Despite this knowledge, despite extra-spending through scholarships, grants, affirmative action in post-secondary institutions and countless other native education plans and programs, the outcomes simply are falling short.

Just over a third of reserve residents manage to even graduate high-school.

The inspiration to pursue education simply is not there for a dependent people who see no future for themselves no matter how many opportunities are presented.

CRIME

 As can be seen below, crime rates are incredibly higher on reserves as compared to off of them. Much goes unreported of course in cases of domestic abuse and animal cruelty that are difficult to monitor. What do we expect with people locked into isolated locations of poverty and misery?

Criminal Code incidents reported to police on-reserve, 2004 
Location of incident
On-reserve Outside reserves
Number of incidents Rate per 100,000 population Number of incidents Rate per 100,000 population
Homicide 41 13 581 2
Attempted murder 24 7 693 2
Robbery 162 50 27,315 93
Assault 20,804 6,464 225,843 770
Sexual assault 1,694 526 21,840 74
Other sexual offences 123 38 2,502 9
Abduction 30 9 605 2
Total violent crimes 22,878 7,108 279,379 953
Breaking and entering 7,276 2,261 267,441 912
Motor vehicle theft 2,887 897 166,657 568
Theft over $5,000 257 80 17,037 58
Theft $5,000 and under 7,586 2,357 673,299 2,297
Possession of stolen goods 594 185 34,806 119
Fraud 691 215 96,400 329
Total property crimes 19,291 5,994 1,255,640 4,283
Prostitution 9 3 6,484 22
Gaming and betting 2 1 191 1
Offensive weapons 1,289 400 16,713 57
Arson 603 187 12,545 43
Bail violations 5,337 1,658 98,997 338
Counterfeiting currency 282 88 159,607 544
Disturbing the peace 13,721 4,263 103,301 352
Mischief (property damage over $5,000) 810 252 11,836 40
Mischief (property damage $5,000 and under) 15,990 4,968 325,025 1,109
Other 12,883 4,003 209,047 713
Total other Criminal Code offences 50,926 15,823 943,746 3,219
Total Criminal Code offences 93,095 28,925 2,478,765 8,455

Increased law enforcement will not ease this epidemic of crime. Natives are already hugely over-represented in our justice system. Again we have to change the system rather than trying to patch the current failing one.

We often hear of people trying to claim that we need to maintain the reserve system in order to preserve native culture. As with so many things, that is failing dismally. Language and cultural practices are vanishing  quickly on reserve. When one starts looking into the more accomplished native artists and performers out there, they will invariably find that most of those people have left their reserves or were never on one to begin with. As has been said before; poverty will kill culture far faster than prosperity ever will.

Do Chinese Canadians need utter separation from society in order to retain their culture? Jamaican Canadians? Ukranian? Of course not.

Ending the reserve system is not cultural genocide nor assimilation!

I really get tired of idiots perpetuating the crap above. Cultures flourish all around the world without segregation and native ones can and will too. The current culture being fostered on native reserves is simply one of dependency and misery. Hardly a reflection of some kind of noble past culture that some naïve academics and activists appear to envision.

Nobody can honestly look at the trends and numbers with regards to the Canadian reserve system and claim that it is sustainable or even humane. It is a catastrophic failure being held together by the racist Indian Act. We need to work to get away from both the Indian Act and the reserve system as it stands or things will only get worse for everybody concerned.

I understand that we can’t simply end these sorts of things overnight. Until we set ending the system as an end goal though, all we are doing is futilely trying to fix a system that needs ending rather than repair.

I look forward to informed and realistic discussions seeking ways to end the cycle of misery that we have in Canada with the reserve system under the Indian Act.

What Bronconnier can do on crime.

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 I have low hopes for Dave Bronconnier (Liberal Mayor of Calgary) doing much regarding crime in our city. As Rob C aptly pointed out in a comment in my prior posting, our Mayor is prioritizing pissing money away on grossly overpriced pedestrian bridges as opposed to addressing the exploding street violence in the city. Whether it is crime, infrastructure, housing or any other issue, Bronconnier’s response to issues has been pathetically predictable. Bronconnier whines and shifts blame to the federal/provincial governments and holds his hand out for more money much like an irresponsible teen who has pissed his allowance away on toys and now cannot afford bus fare to get to school. There has never been an indication of any initiative or creativity on the part of Mayor Bronconnier. He simply keeps spending money on idiotic and poorly managed projects, and then raises taxes upon Calgarians while snivelling to every other level of government for more funding.

 As I said before, it will take effort on the part of every level of government in order to stop this growing trend of violent crime. The criminal code of Canada is federal jurisdiction. Harper has been trying to pass justice reform to no avail for years now. Hopefully Harper indeed gets the majority required so that those reforms can be passed into law. While the proposed changes may not go far enough in my view, they certainly are a step in the right direction. The provinces are responsible for management of legal proceedings and management of correction for criminals sentenced to less than two years (a sadly large amount of sentences). To his credit, Stelmach has been speaking of pursuing bail reforms and hiring more prosecutors in hopes of cutting back on bail being granted to violent criminals. The province has some authority on the appointment of judges as well and I do hope that they begin to appoint wisely.

 In the realm of our violent and repeat offenders, sentences and parole must be addressed and that is federal turf. That the the number one problem regarding the violent crimes.

 In the city of Calgary there are many things that can be done with the resources at hand and we need not wait for federal or provincial initiatives.

 New York city in the 80s was known around the world as a haven for lawlessness and violent crime. In my youth I remember the images of graffiti strewn subway cars and gangs roaming the streets unchecked. Shootings occurred daily on the streets of New York and the city was constantly the butt of dark humour as it’s citizens lived in fear.

 George L. Kelling and Catherine Coles wrote a book called “ Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities” which expanded on an article that Kelling wrote in the 80s. The basic premise of the initiative is that urban crime needs to be tackled from the bottom up. That is summarized below:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

 

 The bottom line is, when there is an appearance of no pride or order, disorder will grow and flourish.

 My son works downtown. One evening not long ago I went to pick him up from work. I arrived early so I parked in a lot across the street from what is known as the “Crack Mac’s store” on 8th and 8th. I cannot count the open drug transactions and solicitations that I saw in that short 15 minutes. These dealers and buyers did not even make a token effort to hide their activities at a busy downtown LRT stop.

 With a targeted crackdown on known dealing spots such as these, I understand that crack dealing and use will not be eliminated. What will happen however is that the visible tolerance of this crap will disappear. What kind of municipal pride do we have when we let this happen right in plain sight? How many commuters choose to walk blocks in all seasons in order to avoid using that notorious train station? The simple presence of a couple police officers there would end that.

 Broken windows, graffiti, aggressive panhandlers and open drug dealing all lead to the atmosphere of lawlessness that breeds even more crime. We have lost municipal pride and it is showing on our streets.

 We need to take on a zero-tolerance approach and aspects of the “broken windows” method have proven to be greatly successful. Bronconnier’swildly overpriced, artistic pedestrian bridges will mean nothing if they are covered with crackheads and bums.

 Calgary has tried the coddling approach with our homeless drug addicts and squeegee kids. That has simply led to downtown streets crawling with bums aggressively approaching working people at all hours of the day. This keeps law abiding citizens from nearing downtown whenever possible. That leads to criminal citizens happily filling the void. This has to end. This costs us socially and economically. How does it affect investment in our city when visitors see bums on every corner, open drug deals in progress and they are accosted by beggars in our downtown? It certainly does not encourage people to invest or relocate their businesses into our city.

 Getting back to New York, when Rudy Giuliani became mayor, he expanded the “broken windows” method to the entire city as it had shown great success in New York Transit already. Zero tolerance was implemented along with a “compstat” program that helped police track crime and vandalism trends.

 The outcome of the New York initiatives speaks volumes. In the last 12 years in New York violent crime dropped 75%. The murder rate in New York dropped to levels not seen since 1963 and now ranks with Boise Idaho for murders per-capita. In a city the size of New York this is astounding.

 The “broken windows” method is no panacea and not every initiative can be directly applied in Calgary. It sure as hell would be a beginning however.

 Perhaps Mayor Bronco could redirect some officers from setting up speed traps in our myriad of construction zones with no workers into having them crack down on the open drug dealing, vandalism and bums in our city center. Unlike Bronconnier’s other “initiatives” it would not cost tens of millions and I bet the results would become apparent within months.

 We need to fight violent crimes on all levels. There is a great deal of power in the hands of Calgary’s city hall should they choose to actually exercise it. Blaming the federal and provincial governments is not an excuse.

Circling the drain.

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UPDATE: On my digression regarding the murderous scumbag Roland Warawa. Warawa shot a jewelry store owner in the neck in a robbery attempt in 1997, Warawa fired upon two police officers at the time as well. He was of course released after a pathetic and lenient sentence. In 2006 Warawa was convicted on drug charges. He got three months for that (two months with Canada’s shameful 2/3 mandatory release policy) and was banned from possessing firearms until 2014 (that worked well).

 Since all of those arrests, Warawa has shot two more people. Does it take a psychological genius to realize that this maniac should never have been released? Apparently so.

 Warawa is only 30 right now. You can rest assured that unless we change our system this piece of human trash will be free and trying to kill people well before he is 40.

 What does it take in this nation to get a real prison sentence??????

 

 

 According to the Red Star, Stephane Dion is now claiming that the “Green Shift” is not a major campaign plank.

 Not since Kim Campbell have we seen such an inept federal campaign. The Liberals have desperately been trying to put Ignatieff and Bob Rae in the spotlight as voters have been visibly recoiling from Dion’s incomprehensible campaigning. Now the Liberals are backing away from main basis of their own campaign.

 A Harper majority is still far from a sure thing. Many of those who are fleeing the Liberal Party are landing in support of the NDP and Greens. This likely will cause the CPC to swing even a little more to the left in hopes of harvesting enough disenchanted Liberal voters in order to get that elusive minority.

 I can understand that strategy, but still am worried about how far left the commitments will go.

 I dearly hope to see a CPC majority. That is the last hope that the old Harper will re-appear and begin to pursue the Libertarian/Conservative values that he used to promote. If Harper ends up being another Mulroney and remains bound to the wishes of Quebec and Toronto I guess we in the West will have to introvert and push our provincial leaders into a more regionally defensive sort of role. Time will tell.

 In the last few months, Calgary has been something of a shooting gallery. Gang murders have been hitting record levels and recently an innocent man was caught in the crossfire and shot in the face. An arrest has been made in that recent shooting today.

Roland Ashley Warawa, 30, of Calgary, has been charged with two counts of attempted murder, pointing a firearm, possession of a weapon dangerous to the public peace, unauthorized possession, discharging a firearm with intent to wound, and criminal negligence causing bodily harm. Warawa has also been charged in connection with a Sept. 4 shooting that left a man with a stomach wounds.

 According to radio news, Warawa has a lengthy criminal past. This is no surprise in Canada’s system. The majority of arrests that have been made in the spate of shootings in Calgary have involved suspects with long violent histories. Innocent people are dying because of Canada’s pathetic, bleeding heart justice system that cares nothing for victims and releases the most dangerous of people among us after embarrassingly sad little sentences.

 Calgary’s Mayor Bronconier has been predictible in his calling for more provincial money for police officers. Ed Stelmach has been predictible in his refusal to increase that funding for our growing (and increasingly dangerous) city.

 Calgary needs more police officers, of that there is no doubt. Officers alone are not a solution however. We need to lock up our violent offenders and lock them up for life. How many more people have to die before our politicians clue into this concept? It is not that complicated. I understand that we will never totally eliminate violent crimes. It is inexcusable when we see crimes committed by people with such violent histories. These people should never have been released in the first place. Personally, I think those who sit on parole boards and release violent people among us should be forced to billet these violent animals in their own households. Perhaps then they will consider a little longer before releasing murderers.

 It will take effort on both the federal and provincial fronts in order to fix our failing justice system. Harper has been trying for some time to pass an improved crime bill and has been handcuffed by our leftist, criminal-coddling opposition. Should Harper get a majority, I hope and expect that one of his first orders of business will be to expedite his justice reforms in the house.

 Dion is giving out gifts in his terrible campaign. It is up to Harper to turn those political gifts into a majority.