I had an exchange with some patrons in my pub today. Nothing that new as I am inclined to grouchiness and am not prone to holding back when somebody is giving me attitude.

It is rare but it is not for the first time that somebody came into my restaurant with an apparent service animal. The dog had an impressive looking blanket on it and was well behaved. When asked for the service dog credentials however, the dog handler got belligerent with my server. When I followed up I was told that the ID card was in the mail. Then was told that a letter from a psychiatrist trumps the need for a service card ID.

To be blunt, that is utter bullshit and I called it such.

Service animals are fantastic and they help improve the standard of living for people with all sorts of challenges. I am more than overjoyed to have people bring accredited service animals into my establishment. If a patron complained about the animal, I would happily invite the patron who complained to go elsewhere. Note use of the term “accredited” though.

To servers and other food service business owners, below is a picture of the ID that ALL people who are in possession of an accredited service animal will carry. Nothing less than the presentation of that ID will allow you to bring that animal into the establishment just as you can’t serve beer to a person who appears to be a minor unless they provide ID.

Here are the steps to apply for an accredited service dog. Click here for more detail.

When a person tries to bring a non-accredited service dog into a food service establishment, it is not a simple “no harm, no foul” sort of offense.

For one, the owner of that establishment may face serious legal sanctions from Alberta Health Services for bringing animals into their restaurants. Whether we like it or not, it is illegal to bring animals into food service establishments and when somebody does so they are putting the livelihood of the owner and the staff at risk with your selfish actions.

The other thing that is enraging is that when people try to sneak fake service animals into places, they set a poor example which furthers challenges to those reliant on real service animals.

It is heartbreaking (not to mention illegal) when one hears of a blind person being turned away from a taxi or an epileptic person being turned away from a pub because of their service animals.

Bad experiences from people with unaccredited service animals unfortunately can inspire some business owners and staff to try to turn away all animals.

I understand as well that many animals provide comfort to people with all sorts of challenges. Good for them. If it works, by all means continue to do so. Don’t try to pretend that it is an accredited service animal though. It is not. Neither the animal nor the handler are properly trained and they can cause havoc in the wrong circumstances.

The means are there to train to acquire accredited service animals. If you need one, I certainly hope you can get one.

In the mean time, don’t try to sneak your uncertified animal into my or anybody else’s establishment. In doing so you put others at risk and harm the credibility of those who have accredited animals.

It has been nearly two years since the night that Eddie Maurice found himself as the only line of defense between his baby and two intruders in his yard late one February night. Eddie verbally warned the criminals to leave. When they continued to approach, Eddie fired two warning shots with a .22 rifle into the ground which caused the intruders to flee. Maurice then returned to his home and called police.

Hours after the incident, police arrived and arrested Eddie on firearm charges.One of the criminals had apparently been hit in the arm by a bullet. The nightmare for the Maurice family then truly began.

Determined to convict this homeowner for defending his property and family, the Crown relentlessly dragged Eddie Maurice through the courts for months with appearances nearly every two weeks. It was speculated that Eddie may spend as much as eight years in prison. Finally when an RCMP ballistics report concluded that the bullet in the arm of the criminal was indeed due to a ricochet, the Crown finally dropped all charges against Maurice. They will never admit it but the growing crowds of supporters outside of the courthouse at every hearing for Maurice helped the Crown realize that they were way offside with public opinion with the attempted prosecution of Maurice.

The change in Maurice was immediately evident when the charges were dropped. His usually tense demeanor was relaxed. He was smiling which was rarely seen as the courts dragged him through the system. Eddie was looking forward to simply going on with his live and raising his family.

For over a year it looked like Eddie Maurice’s wishes to get on with his life would be respected. Unfortunately that all ended in September of 2019 when it was revealed that the habitual criminal who got himself shot at the Maurice home was suing Eddie Maurice. Not only was the crook in on the lawsuit game, but the Alberta government was looking for a piece of the action as well. It was astounding.

Upon hearing of this ridiculous travesty, Alberta Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer immediately extricated the government from their role in this absurd lawsuit. While bureaucrats in the justice department saw Maurice as the one who got away and were pursuing a spiteful suit against him, the Minister in charge realized how abhorrent this action was.

The Trespass Statutes (Protecting Law-Abiding Property Owners) Amendment Act was passed by the UCP government last year. This statute prevents criminals from suing property owners if they got themselves injured while committing the crime. The Act was made retroactive to a month before the Maurice incident and that was no mistake.

Longtime loser Ryan Watson and the lawyer behind him appears to be undeterred by this legislative setback. They smell a payday and they plan to pursue this action to the bitter end.

Watson is no victim or sweetheart here. When he was arrested after his attempted robbery of the Maurice home, he was found to be in possession of methamphetamine. This was in contravention of a previous probation order. That tells us two things. Watson is a meth user, likely an addict and has a criminal history.

This week, Watson’s affidavit was filed in court. It can be downloaded in full below.

The content of the affidavit is laughable and insulting. In it, Watson claims that it was only through his catlike reflexes when he moved his head that he dodged one of the apparently multiple bullets fired his way. Yes, Ryan is apparently faster than a speeding bullet. Meth induced reality can be difficult to interpret at times.

Watson goes on to state how he feels that the Crown should press charges against Maurice again. Watson (or at least his lawyer) knows that he won’t get a payday unless Maurice is found to be guilty of something. Watson also threatens to try to use a rarely exercised legal ability to invoke a private prosecution against Maurice.

The bottom line is that Ryan Watson and his lawyer are hoping that with enough ongoing harassment of the Maurice family that they will give up and settle. Watson’s lawyer will get a new car and Watson will go his merry way with a nice big rock of whatever his pleasure of choice is these days to put in his pipe.

Eddie Maurice has no intention of letting that happen as can be seen in his release from yesterday.

In Watson’s affidavit, he claims a virtual hailstorm of bullets assailed him and his partner in crime that night. He paints Maurice as a psychopath who was intentionally trying to kill him. Never mind that utterly none of the forensic investigation indicated any of this.

Watson often cites the word of his sidekick Stephanie Ann Martens. Ahh yes. Ms. Martens is a credible witness indeed.

Stephanie Martens is a dangerous, repeat criminal with a long record. She was involved in one high speed chase where the vehicle crashed into a building in Saskatchewan.

Martens was part of a more serious incident when a police officer was injured during the chase North of Calgary.

One has to wonder why the hell Martens was loose in the first place in order to attempt to rob homeowners a couple years ago. In light of the flaccid $200 fine she got for attempting to rob the Maurices though, I guess we shouldn’t be shocked.

The word of a career criminal such as Martens isn’t worth a piss hole drilled in a snowbank. Maurice will have to endure listening to this in court for potentially a long time though.

This action by Ryan Watson and his lawyer is nothing more than a shakedown. They are adding stress and misery to a family which has already had to live through a nightmare due to Watson’s past attempt at robbing them. While it is extremely likely that Watson won’t see a nickle from this idiotic, self serving action, the damage caused to the Maurice family can’t be measured.

This case is going to court in Calgary tomorrow. Maurice is asking for a summary dismissal of this claim and he should damn well get it.

If the judge chooses to indulge Watson and his lawyer on this shakedown, the stress and misery for the Maurice family will drag on for months if not years.

How many times must this young family be victimized and for how damn long?

If this is indeed going to be dragged out, it is time to get people together to rally outside the courts yet again. If common sense won’t prevail in the courts, perhaps public outrage will.

How much more must this family endure?

Would we shut down a legal $40 billion gas plant because a handful of activists and a local church minister or two demanded it?

Would we shut down a legal $6.6 billion natural gas pipeline because a distant cousin of Prince Charles said we should?

The above suggestions sound ridiculous yet that is what some people feel that we should do in light of opposition being shown to the CoastalGaslink project by the “hereditary” chiefs and their supporters in the area.

We should begin by defining what a “hereditary” chief is.

“Hereditary” chiefs hold a traditional position within many interior BC native bands. Their role is typically cultural, ceremonial and spiritual. Oral tradition guides these roles. That means that the authority held by “hereditary” chiefs is fluid and utterly arbitrary.

In having five male “hereditary” chiefs gang up upon and strip three female “hereditary” chiefs of their status, we can see how it isn’t reasonable to take these guys very seriously.

Elected chiefs are exactly what they sound like. These are people who were selected through a democratic vote by the citizens of the indigenous bands. Elected chiefs have direct accountability to their people through elections. They have responsibility for their people and the authority to sign into agreements on behalf of their people.

The elected chiefs for all 20 of the impacted First Nations along the Coastal Gaslink pipeline route support the project!

The elected chiefs understand the need for resource development. The elected chiefs understand the need for jobs and a future for their people. The elected chiefs are guided by reality and it shows.

Environmental activists backed by some academics, journalists and even a committee from the United Nations want to ignore the wishes of the elected leaders and shut down this project which would bring work and prosperity to indigenous people in the area. It is unconscionable that these self-serving ideologues want to keep so many people in poverty based on their own personal ideologies. They are cloaking themselves behind the handful of “hereditary” chiefs in opposition to this perfectly legal project.

Things are going to go one of two ways on the Coastal Gaslink.

The RCMP, backed by government are going to intervene as multiple court orders demand in order to get this project rolling, or elected officials will cower in fear of the activists and let this project get shut down.

If the project is shut down, billions of dollars will have been flushed away. The government will be rightly sued by investors for not protecting a legal project and Canada will truly turn into an international investment pariah. Who in their right mind would invest in a nation which refuses to allow legally approved projects to be completed? Whether energy, forestry, farming or even with a golf course, no investor will ever know if they may be shut down by some “hereditary” chief coupled with some activists.

The activists will scream and howl if and when they are rightly removed from the working area. The may get violent. They may force police or perhaps even armed forces to use force in order to remove them. It will make for some very politically dicey scenes.

Too damn bad!

The showdown over the Coastal Gaslink pipeline is about more than the concerns of some “hereditary” chiefs over the concerns of duly elected chiefs. This showdown is about whether or not Canada is a nation of laws or not.

Let’s hope the government shows some strength for a change on this one.

The social justice left loves to demand diversity among organizations. They demand quotas and call for affirmative action plans. They decry companies and political organizations as “old white boy” networks and love to post any picture which doesn’t show an evident rainbow of different races and genders.

The other thing the left loves of course is labor unions.

It only stands to reason that labor union leadership will reflect the diversity that decades of progressive activism has demanded right?

I did a pretty simple search. Wikipedia provides a handy list of unions operating within Canada. I just clicked on each and noted the race and gender of the union president. A few didn’t list their executive members for some reason but I got to fifty and figured it was a decent sampling of who is leading labor unions active in Canada.

Well, much to my astonishment and surprise, it turns out 41 out of 50 union presidents were men!

One would have thought that the activist left would have brought the male leadership ratio below 82 percent by now.

Well perhaps the race thing is more balanced. I didn’t find pictures of every president but from what I could gather, 46 out of 50 union presidents are white!

How can this be? Is it a conspiracy led by the patriarchy? Did the KKK infiltrate union membership to the point where they won’t elect non-white presidents?

There has to be some unsavory organization preventing these bastions of progressive thought from practicing what they preach.

Until the left can resolve their clear diversity issues within their own ranks, perhaps they should keep their collective traps shut on diversity in other organizations. Their silence on the union issue is rather deafening.

The ball’s in your court now Gil

In their desperate quest to find racism where little exists, online social justice warriors (SJWs) have now determined that any critique of cab drivers is an act of racism which demands online reporting and a ban from Twitter.

I really wish I was kidding.

It began (as these things often do) with a simple tweet. It was a few days ago, hadn’t gotten much reaction and I had pretty much forgotten about it. Some goofy SJW spotted it this evening and brought it back into the scroll along with a pile of ridiculous accusations. This of course drew out more of their ilk as SJWs are indeed drawn to social media swarms like flies to shit.

I was tweeting in response to an idiotic class action suit launched by Toronto cab drivers whining about Uber which was rightly thrown out by a judge.

While I wasn’t nice about it, my point still stands. Taxi drivers have alienated consumers while hiding behind protected cab license monopolies for decades. This has allowed service issues to fester such as timeliness, politeness and personal hygiene. Not every driver was bad of course but far too many were and there was little that consumers could do about it. Anybody who has spent a lot of time in cabs over the last few decades has experienced all of the above problems. Not always but far too much.

Years of taking passengers for granted by cabs has allowed ride sharing services to explode onto the scene. There was little sympathy or loyalty to be felt from abused consumers for the plight of taxis as the market changed.

Now here is where it gets loopy. A tweeter who goes by Saje3331 fires out the tweet below.

When I pointed out that there was no racism in my tweet and that cab drivers come in all colors, she again called me a racist and apparently reported me to Twitter in hopes of my being banned.

When others asked her where the hell the racism was in my tweet, she started posting weird stuff about her marks in school and such. I blocked her as it was getting more than weird.

Not to be outdone in idiocy, some dingdong named Craig Rigden jumps in with a vapid assertion.

Um Craig, criticizing poor taxi service is exactly what I was doing. It is rather literal in the tweet.

As others began to ask Rigden where the racism was, he kept posting a screen snap with parts of my tweet circled in it which again only demonstrated a critique of cab drivers yet in his addled world he somehow felt he was demonstrating some sort of crazy proof of racism.

I then blocked him of course. I do fear that idiocy can be contagious if followed closely enough.

The fellow below is either lying or has no sense of smell. Either way, one of those conditions has somehow made him determine that my posting was intolerant of new Canadians somehow.

A number of other idiots chimed in but there is little sense pasting them all here. It is all much the same baseless crap from them.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Issues with the poor personal hygiene of cab drivers have been happening all around the world.

In a municipality in the UK a council had to take action to battle smelly cab drivers

In San Diego the airport had to actually do a smell test on drivers due to so many passenger complaints. The drivers should have simply bathed rather than complained.

In Indonesia cab drivers were tested for stench as well.

Nobody wants to be trapped in a vehicle for a period of time with a driver who smells like a goat’s asshole and it is neither unreasonable nor racist to complain when drivers do indeed smell that way (and at times they do no matter which race).

Soap and deodorant are indiscriminate. They work on every race and every race needs constant applications of both. Especially if they are going to drive a damned cab.

Forgotten were my critiques of the timeliness and politeness. It was the mention of the stench that drew most of the ire of the social justice loons.

Full disclosure here, I have been driving for Uber on occasion for the last couple years. It is a good way to make a few extra bucks now and then when my pub is slow.

Note that with 367 trips, I have maintained a 4.93 out of 5 rating from passengers.

My sparkling personality didn’t do it so what was it?

It was pretty simple. I don’t drive like a maniac, I am polite and helpful with the passengers, I don’t decline fares and oh yea I FUCKING WASH REGULARLY!

That is the beauty of ride share systems. They put responsibility directly into the driver’s hands for good customer service. You can directly rate your driver and it matters. If a driver rating drops too low, they can lose their ability to drive. All you could do before was perhaps call a dispatcher at a cab company to leave a complaint which will be immediately forgotten.

This of course gives drivers a very direct incentive to do a good job.

With added competition in the market from ride sharing companies, taxis have finally been upping their game as well though it will be too late for many. They simply stunk for too damn long.

Most Uber drivers are visible minorities too by the way.

The world of social justice has gotten so insane that they try to quell all contrary discussion with cries of racism to the point where taxi drivers are apparently a race unto themselves and thus above critique. It is absurd but these nuts do manage to shut good voices and debates down at times. While the social justice twitter mob was trying to swarm me for daring to question taxi service, we had a case in Calgary where some nut has purposely been assaulting random people with purely racial motives involved. That is real racism but the social justice gang is too busy inventing “dog whistles” to take notice of or deal with it.

The irony of the whole thing is that the fools accusing me of racism are working on their own personal assumption that all cab drivers are visible minorities. That is pure racism on their own part but their self-absorbed world of social justice won’t let them see it.

Now aside from the race baiting hysteria, I do wish more taxi drivers would fucking bathe and wear deodorant. Or maybe as an Uber driver I don’t….