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Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman Yves Coté has finally produced a report on a particularly shameful incident which occurred early in Canada’s mission to Afghanistan. But the ombudsman’s conclusions — in fact his entire report — don’t go near the real story.
Coté’s report is about what happened to a Canadian Armed Forces sniper, Master Corporal Graham Ragsdale, a member of the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Calgary Light Infantry. It was 2002 and the NATO mission to Afghanistan to rout the Taliban had just begun.
Among members of the PPCLI on that first mission were two Canadian sniper teams, each comprised of two men, a shooter armed with a 50-calibre sniper rifle and the spotter, who helps the shooter zero in with his telescopic sights. The two are interchangeable.
Ragsdale was teamed up with a soldier named Perry.
These sniper teams were lethal weapons in the early days of the war against the insurgency. One Canadian sniper killed an insurgent with what still stands as the longest sniper’s shot in the world — 2300 metres. Even the Americans were impressed, so much so that they gave the 3 PPCLI snipers bronze medals with the V for Valor.
But Ragsdale and Perry had done something that alienated them from their fellow soldiers. They had desecrated the bodies of dead Taliban fighters they found on a mountain ridge nicknamed The Whale.
They had cut off one corpse’s finger as a trophy. They posed with a cigarette in the corpse’s mouth and a card around his neck, reading “I am a Taliban Terrorist’ or something to that effect. And one of them had defiled the decapitated body of one of the Taliban by defecating down the neck.
All of this was filmed by a Canadian Press reporter-photographer. The photos were deleted, but not before others had seen them. Ragsdale and Perry were shunned, because real soldiers treat their enemy with respect. The two came home in disgrace; Perry isn't even with the military any longer.
Coté got saddled with this when Ragsdale's father Patrick beefed to the Tory government that his son and other members of the sniper’s squad were ostracized in verbalization sessions where combat troops are encouraged to express their feelings. As a result, said Ragsdale senior, his son and others are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Now, Coté should know this whole sick story, because even I know it. In fact, I called the DND’s investigative arm two years ago this summer to ask them about the body-desecration rumours. I know that the military police tracked these allegations as far as The Whale, in Afghanistan, where, if they exhumed those bodies, they surely would have known what happened. I know that Canadian Press is fully aware of this.
Instead, we get this incredible wash job by the Ombudsman, who claims he was stonewalled by the military in his search for documentary evidence. Who the hell did he talk to? I can understand why the military didn’t want this out. They knew they would have to sell Canada’s mission to Afghanistan. They didn’t need another black eye like Shidane Arone, the teen who died in Canadian custody in Somalia. Snipers desecrating a body isn't Canadian.
Coté’s report, entitled ‘The battle of an elite sniper: The concerns of a father,” concludes that the Department of National Defence and the military top brass Ragsdale’s father Patrick as a pest to be gotten rid of, rather than as someone with a legitimate complaint.
Was it legitimate? I don't know, because Coté either left out the desecration bits or didn't know of them. Either way, he hasn't done his job and we're no wiser.
Heading into the next cycle of coverup over the allegations we were party to the torture of Afghans by Afghans, I'm less that reassured that there is oversight of the Canadian military.
Why are we not hearing the truth?
When you and I bank a few bucks after the taxman has his way with us, they’re called savings.
When governments overtax us, the difference between what they steal and what they budgeted to steal is called a ‘surplus.’
Montreal’s Tremblay administration finished 2006 with a $140,4 million surplus, or 3,6 % of the total $3.855 billion budget.
City Hall’s spin on this evidence of overtaxation is that it’s proportional to the surpluses of past administrations and in other large cities in Québec.
“It’s like a household earning $60 grand who manages to save $2,160, says Frank Zampino, président du comité exécutif et responsable des finances à la Ville,
He noted that the city cut expenses by $300 million in 2006 and will shed 1000 jobs through attrition in the next three years. The city has a hiring freeze in effect since last summer.
How’d they run the surplus? Strip away the blather and we learn it’s because snow removal cost them less this winter, they made more from real estate transfer taxes, the so-called welcome tax and they saved millions by delaying implementation of the island-wide first responder service.
What happens to the money? Turns out the city’s already spent more than 90 percent of it. The boroughs generated more than a quarter of that surplus total and they get to keep it. That’s $37 million. Another $53 million has already been earmarked for the 2007 budget.
Another $33 million gets added to a contingency fund, which already sits at $25 million. Finally, $8.6 million will go toward the Waterworks Fund, created to rebuild the island’s leaky water distribution system.
The news of the surplus was accompanied by Montreal’s usual whine about not having stable sources of revenue other than property taxes. The city wants a percentage of the PST, a slice of the gas tax, or some other revenue stream, but Quebec has jealously insisted on controlling the purse strings.
We may not benefit from Montreal’s surplus, but at least the city isn’t paying senior civil servants ‘performance bonuses' this year. That’s got to hurt. If the city isn’t lying about that, I’m lovin’ it.
I can understand Premier Charest’s immediate requirement to present a cabinet that looks radically different than the last two. Coming within a hair of losing an election and being reduced to minority status will do that.
The trouble with catering to appearances is that it sometimes ignores basics.
For example, Quebec’s new Environment/Sustainable Development minister Line Beauchamp doesn’t speak enough English to give interviews, let alone attend a conference in English.
Madame Beauchamp isn’t alone in that inability. A sizeable percentage of Quebec’s more than seven million people can’t get by in English, thanks to a pathetic level of English instruction in the French public school system and a disinclination on the part of the bureaucracy and the unions to see that situation improved anytime soon.
In the Quebec of 2007, I find it unacceptable that a minister of the Crown in a borderless portfolio like environment cannot at least ‘get by’ in the majority language of the continent.
Here’s why: Quebec has long had a wasteful tradition of trying to reinvent the wheel because its bureaucracy and elected officials don’t or can’t access information from elsewhere in the world. The result will be a minister who depends on her bureaucrats to tell her what to think. Not an auspicious start in a province already controlled by functionaries.
Under former minister Tom Mulcair, the environment ministry was turned on its ear. Developers and municipalities couldn’t play footsie under the table in developing environmentally sensitive areas and industry couldn’t get away with the abusive Third-World dumping that has characterized Quebec for far too long.
But much of that environmental zeal evaporated in the heat of political realities, like pleasing powerful friends of the party and keeping the construction trades busy. Mulcair quit in a huff and has joined the federal NDP.
I stand to be corrected in Madame Beauchamp proves to be worthy of the environment limo. But the first impression is that she’s in the job because she’s a woman from a region the Liberals need to win to return a majority. That’s not much of a CV.
Hey, West Island, how's it feel to be mocked and ridiculed by the same provincial government you've helped elect since the Equality Party died?
Yes, you have a quota in cabinet. One anglo. Good thing she's also young, a visible minority and a woman. I don't see a quota for good-looking female MNAs, but I'm betting Yolande James will be in range of the NatAss camera.
Ms. James may be a capable politician with plenty of experience behind the scenes, but that's not the point. I find it astounding that the English-speaking voting public hasn't rebelled against the craven hypocrisy of the Charest Liberals when it comes time to vote.
Where's the West Island Metro, like the four-station Porkbarrel Express to Laval?
Ever ask yourself why ambulance response times are slower on the West Island than anywhere else in the Montreal region?
What about the more or less permanently overcrowded ER at the Lakeshore General?
Where's the hospital for the exploding off-island populations from Pincourt west to the Ontario border?
The Agence Metropolitain de Transport fascists won't even serve people in English, for godsakes.
Yet the Waste Island lies down and allows itself to be screwed come every election.
No wonder the Liberals have no respect. We just keep on taking their crap.
Mercier Pequiste MNA Daniel Turp yesterday announced Quebec is ready for its own constitution, 25 years to the day and the hour after Canada adopted its constitution without Quebec’s approval. Turp will be presenting this thing at the NatAss when it gets back later this spring. Turp’s Constitution will delineate Quebec’s fields of jurisdiction — health, culture, communications, environment, agriculture and regional development. It’s designed solely to start a fight. Some of these — communications and health and environment, for example, were always part of Ottawa’s purview, while others are shared jurisdictions.
Turp admits he’s out to drive a wedge between Stephen Harper’s Conservative federal government, Jean Charest’s minority Liberals and Mario Dumont’s adequistes. We’ll see who’s really an autonomist or an assymetrist, sez he.
There’s plenty of hypocrisy and ambiguity for Turp to mine. Mario Dumont and Jean Allaire, in the 1992 Allaire report that led to Dumont’s spit with the Bourassa Liberals, listed these as among the power that Quebec should attempt to recover in its drive toward autonomy. We already know the Charest Liberals and the Harper Conservatives are just fine with assymetrical federalism.
Asked why he bothered, Turp, one of the few real thinkers the PQ has left, said “in life, you’ve got to seize the initiative. Today, I seized it.” Too bad the rest of the planet was dealing with the Virginia Tech massacre, because Turp got next to no coverage.
Turp’s proposed constitution contains 15 articles, including the recognition that this province is “a State in law, a free and democratic society where citizens are equal and French is the official language.” Representatives would be elected by proportional representation on a fixed election date, we’d all have automatic Quebec citizenship and Quebec’s territorial integrity would be guaranteed.
The most interesting thing about Turp’s constitution is that nowhere does it preach sovereignty or independence. Turp’s no fool; he knows it won’t sell. So he’s come up with a wrench he can toss into the gears of government.
More péquiste trickery. Jacques Parizeau’s ‘astuce’ has a successor.
More tanks? The Harper Tories have promised 120 Leopard 2 tanks. Afghanistan is littered with the charred hulls of Russian tanks destroyed by the same weapons now being used to engineer the roadside bombs which have killed many of the 53 Canadians to have died on this mission. Not a week goes by that we don’t hear how we’re winning hearts and minds, but the real story is that almost none of the $100 million a year Canada spends on aid gets into the hands of the people who need it the most. Poppy eradication campaigns eat up a lot of it, giving the avergae Afghan farmer another reason to hate us. Are better weapons the answer?
Ten-year-old John Pham died of injuries he suffered in a school bus crash outside Toronto. They were on a field trip; the driver apparently clipped a truck. The boy would be alive today if everyone was wearing seatbelts.
Dr. Murray Katz, one of the best kids’ doctors I know, sent me the following:
"Thirty years ago I worked doing a test design with Transport Canada for the child car seats we see now everywhere. I was proud of that work and I also helped establish a program so that every baby went home in a car seat.
"In regard to schools buses, you are 100% right there should be seat belts and facing backward is also best. I tried about 20 years ago to have this done and I went to all the bus companies and the school boards and met with a dead end. No one would agree that only 2 children should be placed for seat.
To get around this I designed a school bag that is in the shape to function as a sort of air bag. The books are inside and then it is hung over the back of the seat of the child in front. In case of an accident the child moves forward into the back of the foam lined air bag designed school bag. One again, the bus companies would not put in a piece of Velcro that would make this work. I worked for a time with Dorel to get them to manufacture the design but it never came to anything. Perhaps their officials would now be interested if they were contacted.
"So there is a part solution that parents can do, it just has to be finally designed and used."
I heep hearing the same old tired crapola about how we can't protect against everything.
But remember the huge foofarah here in Quebec over long-nose versus square-nosed schoolbuses? The coroner who pushed that initiative turned out to be flogging the discredited long-nose school buses to the Cuban government, who was just fine with them.
This is different. This is so intuitive, I'm astounded that anyone would be so stupid as to say we don't need seat belts in school buses.
What's stupid is insisting that our six-year-olds be buckled into approved car seats before we leave the driveway, then sending that same precious little child to school on a bus that doesn't even have seatbelts, let alone proper seats.
As for this business about the danger of kids not being evacuated in time, what's wrong with a school bus monitor whose job it is to do what the driver can't? Distraction is a major part of the proble anyway, so let's deal with both problems at once.
Sure, it's money. But we have no problem paying for big, fat bureaucratized school boards. Take some of that money and retrofit the buses. Now.
What would happen if parents refused to let their kids travel on buses without seatbelts? We have the power to make our kids' buses safer. Why don't we care enough about our kids to make it happen?
The Quebec Coroner’s Office today released Dr Paul G. Dionne’s report on the death last February of 36-year-old Pierrette Parisien at Montreal’s Sacré-Coeur Hospital. The Coteau du Lac woman suffered from recurring neck pain, but was otherwise in good health when she went to see her chiropractor Feb. 6, Feb 7 and Feb 20. As a result of those three visits, said Dr. Dionne, she exhibited symptoms of a severed right vertebral artery that led to her death Feb. 22.
The story begins on the sixth, when Parisien showed up at her chiro complaining of headache and major neck pain. He examined her, found the pain points and proposed an adjustment. HE DID NOT GET HER TO SIGN A RELEASE ACKNOWLEDGING THAT SHE KNEW OF THE RISKS, a point the coroner addresses later in his recommendations.
Back home, Madame Parisien felt dizzier than she usually felt after an adjustment and had chills and pins and needles in her face and arm. She went back to her chiro the next day, the 7th, telling him she felt better, but still had a headache and neckache and she still felt dizzy.
So he gave her another adjustment. It improved the pain in her neck, but she complained of dizziness and a loss of sensation.
Two weeks later, on the 20th, she was back with a stiff neck. The chiro manipulated her spinal column, this time noting that there was no ‘cavitation’ or cracking that usually accompanied her cervical adjustments. She complained of pain, headache and nausea as he continued, then rapidly lost control of her eyes and her ability to speak. The clinic staff called 911 and the ambulance crew arrived quickly to administer oxygen, but she was declared brain dead two days later.
In his extensive recommendations, Dr. Dionne all but said Quebec’s Office des Professions is negligent in failing to better assure that chiropractic manipulations are performed within strict guidelines. Patients have to be better informed of the risks and the scientific debate over the benefits of such adjustments. Dr. Dionne also said Statistics Canada, the Canadian Health Information Institute , the College des medecins de Quebec and the Institut national de santé publique du Québec should tracking the number of patients killed or injured as a result of repeated cervical manipulations.
The six-page report was harshly critical of the Office des Professions and the Quebec College of Chiropractic for failing to keep better track of those who practice illegally, but the thrust was that enough people have died from these manipulations that people should be informed of the risks.
If you're a fan of chiropractic, this is required reading.
Yesterday, I got a call from my old friend Bottle Man with some amazing news: he’s about to collect his old age pension. If you’re a West Islander, you’ll know him as the guy on the bike who collects cans, bottles and anything with a deposit on it. Well before dawn, he’d be outside our place in Pointe Claire, going through our blue box for worthwhile items. We got into the habit of leaving him our bottles and cans so he could cash them in.
People who’d see him would think he was a scavenger living on the detritus of civilization, but he was an amazingly erudite man. He’d spent more than 31 years working for Steinberg's after joining the company in November, 1967. He knew Sam Steinberg and his four sons and the grocery industry, but when Steinberg's closed, he set out to find something else to do.
How’d he hit on collecting recycleables? “It was after the 1995 referendum. Quebec laughed in our faces as they stole 100,000 ballots. So I decided to get even.”
Since then, he’s made well over $100,000, tax-free. He gives 10 percent to his one charity — helping bring Jews to Israel. Since 2002, his contribution has helped 10 families and seven orphans settle there, to the everlasting astonishment of the organizations who do this work.
There are easier ways to make money. Bottle Man has worn out five or six bikes as he makes his rounds just ahead of the recycling trucks in summer’s heat and all but the worst winter weather. Last year, he was hit by a car whose driver he thinks was on his cellphone. Thanks to the cushioning effect of thousands of aluminum cans and plastic bottles, Bottle Man walked away.
Whenever I’d see my friend, we’d stop to chat. When I was running The Suburban, he dropped by to show me the certificate that attested to what he had done on behalf of the State of Israel. Of course he rode there on his bike.
I’m not using his name here, because I have no doubt that some revenuer will set him up for an audit, or worse. He’s not going to stop collecting bottles anytime soon, but at least he now has the luxury of deciding whether he wants to make his rounds.
As he told me so proudly yesterday, “$100,000 in tax-free money and never once did I collect welfare!”
Good on you, sir. You’re a lesson to all of us.
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