Raging Duff

Yesterday, a young man was a guest on my show with with a disturbing story.
Now a star student at an alternative school, the 16-year-old spent a couple of years in The System, the insider's name for Quebec's Youth Protection network. Unlike many of his age, he never got mixed up with drugs because he'd seen up close and personal the damage it can do to someone you love.
Like far too many kids, Julien entered the System as a child at risk. The System turned him into a scrapper who looked to win respect with his fists.
The chip on his shoulder won him friends and admirers, but it put him on the wrong side of the law. As he'll tell you in his own words, he's spent time in closed confinement, the young offender's version of prison. He'd been targeted by youth gangs. He used the only method he knew to protect himself.
The past year saw a positive change in Julien. He attended Choices, an alternative school for young people like him, where he excels in science, mathematics and English. With the support of a loving mother, he's pulling himself out of the hole.
He thought he'd put his past behind him when he went to enlist in the Armed Forces reserve at Montreal's Guy St. recruiting centre Friday, December 14 at 7:30 a.m. Instead, he was arrested. The recruiters had discovered an outstanding warrant for his arrest during a background check, but instead of calling Julien's mom to alert her to the problem, the recruiters tipped the Montreal cops to the outstanding warrant. Then they called him the evening of Dec. 13 to summon him for an early-morning interview. where the police were waiting to arrest him.
For what it's worth, neither Julien nor his family knew about the outstanding warrant and say they would have gone to the police of their own will had they been given the chance. I believe them, because after 40 years in this business, I've come to learn the magnitude of the incompetence that dogs Quebec's social services network, especially where young Anglos are involved.
What disgusts me is that the Canadian Armed Forces seem to find nothing wrong in their actions. As I've since learned, this is standard practice, perhaps dating back to the First World War when men in trouble would enlist to escape the long arm of the law. I've also learned that Quebec's police forces have a standard procedure of ignoring outstanding warrants until they pick someone up on a traffic stop or some such, then treating him or her like a criminal even if that person wasn't even aware of the outstanding paper. In Julien's case, we toss in two police forces, shared jurisdictions and the overworked, poorly managed Batshaw Youth Protection Services being forced to cover the badly managed, bureaucratized Monteregie Health and Social Services network for English-speaking young offenders and you can practically guarantee screwed-up paperwork.
When I heard the story, I asked Julien to sit down in my office and write out what had happened to him. He took less than an hour to write the following account. I did not edit one word of this.

••••••••••••

My name is Julien. I am a former client of Batshaw youth services. Recently, I was harassed by the Montreal police because I had a warrant out for something that had happened while I was in custody however I had no idea that this warrant even existed.
The story starts in March 2007. I was serving a locked YCJA sentence at Shaw bridge campus in Prevost. Previously at another Batshaw institution I was assaulted by several other clients. Because of this i was transferred to the unit i mentioned above. The trouble was I was now being transferred back to the unit where I was assaulted. So I decided to escape from where I was for fear of being attacked again once I was transferred.
My escape was successful, but once I was out though I realized that running away would get me nowhere and I promptly turned myself in.

For the remainder of my sentence I focused all my energy on school and turning my life around. After I was released from custody I decided to join the Canadian forces army reserves. I went through the whole process brought in all my papers.
About two weeks ago I received an email saying that before recruitment process could continue I needed a transcript from sec 3 and some other papers. Oddly enough on Thursday night of last week I received a call from the recruiting centre asking me to come in on Friday morning at 7:30 for an interview. I did find this strange because I hadn’t yet gotten the papers they had asked for but I just assumed they got them through their own means.
The next morning I woke up early and excited, I always wanted to be in the army so I thought I was really on my way.
I was driven by mother to recruiting centre downtown when I got there I was asked for identification by the receptionist this was normal I had given my I.D all the other times I had been there however this time the receptionist kept my card and made me sit in the waiting room.
After about fifteen minutes my mother returned to give me some money to buy myself breakfast after my interview, at the same time four Montreal police officers entered the building. After a brief conversation my mother left for work and I stayed in the waiting room. Shortly after that the officers left as well. In about five minutes I was approached by one of the recruiting officers who told me it would only be a few more minutes and that the guy who was supposed to be interviewing me was late.
After yet another five or ten minutes the police officers returned and after a quick chat with the recruiting officer they entered the waiting with two I.D cards in their hands. First they called out another guy in the waiting and said he had a warrant for his arrest. Then they turned to me and said I did as well. This was a shock to me because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I asked what the warrant was for and they said it was for the time I ran away in march. I immediately told them that they were mistaken and that stuff had been taken care a long time ago, they then told me i was come with them to the police station, I told them that I that i wouldn’t go until I spoke to my mom so I took out my cell phone and started to dial the number. One of the officers grabbed it out of my hand and then another one threw against the wall and hit my head against. I reacted instinctively and pushed the officers off of me, after that I decided to just let it go and that nothing would come out of me resisting, as soon as the police recovered from being pushed away they all jumped on me and pushed me to the floor one of the officers then punched me in the back and another put my arm behind my back and started pushing it upwards. I tried to tell them I was cooperating but the officer pushing my arm pushed harder and when I said they were hurting me they still wouldn’t stop. Eventually they let go and put me in and handcuffs.
In the police car an officer sat next to me and started hitting pushing my head to the side repetitively I told him to stop and that he would lose his job over what he was doing. He then grabbed me by the crotch three times. I obviously got mad and told them to get off of me in a less polite way than that, as soon as I said that the officer driving told me to shut up and that they could do whatever they wanted to me because there were no cameras in the police car.

When I arrived at the police station the officer cut the laces off of my boots instead of just taking them off after that I was finally allowed to call my mom after that I was placed in a holding cell where I waited for several hours to be transported to court where I was released. During those hours I was not read or made to understand my rights and I was not offered anything to eat or drink.

Honestly this whole ordeal really made me lose any faith I had in the Montreal police, what bugs me most however is since I was released from custody in May of 2007 I have been working hard to put my past behind me, I go to school every day, I help out at home and I stay away from trouble but this whole experience brought everything back and that to me was the worst part of it all.

Posted by Jim Duff at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Brian Mulroney’s Blarney carried the day at the Commons ethics committee hearings into allegations the former PM accepted cash payoffs in connection with Air Canada’s $1.8 billion purchase of 34 Airbuses after Mulroney was elected. Schreiber's tale of cash-filled envelopes to the former PM — money Mulroney admits he received and paid taxes on — was even called into question. Was it $300,000, or $225,000?
The RCMP probe — the one that collapsed in 1993 because RCMP Staff Sgt. Fraser Fegenwald leaked details to reporter Stevie Cameron — discovered that Airbus greased Canadian palms to the tune of $20 million. Who got that money? We may never know, because at this point, the chances of there being a full public inquiry are evaporating. Today, Mulroney backed off his early call for a public inquiry after demanding the chance to clear his name shortly after Schreiber filed his allegations. Based on Schreiber's public comments since then, Mulroney now says he's not sure an inquiry is still needed. Conservatives on the committee say they don't see a reason for the committee to proceed with its investigation of the affair.
I hate to keep harping on this, but just after Stephen Harper told the Commons he’d call a public probe, he backed off in writing, giving himself an out. We don’t know what Dr. David Johnston will advise him on Jan. 11, but given the terms of reference the PM set for Dr. Johnston, there’s plenty of wiggle room
Sure sounds like we’re being set up for a ‘no inquiry needed’ verdict from the Harper government. Dang, I sure wanted to know who won that $20 million grease treatment.

Posted by Jim Duff at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conrad Black got 78 months in a Florida federal pen years and forfeited 6 million bucks for raiding the Hollinger piggybank. The mainly institutional shareholders didn’t lose a cent until the American neo-puritans decided to make an example of him. Only then did Hollinger tank.
Contrast that with Norbourg serial scammer Vincent Lacroix, the author of the worst made-in-Quebec financial sting in history. This scum-sucking toad was found guilty of ripping off 9,200 clients, many of them dependent on that money for their retirement, to the tune of $84 million. There was NEVER any question of his culpability; Lacroix was found guilty of making 137 irregular transactions, for a value of $115 million.
Every single thing he did happened under the benign gaze of Quebec's toothless, barkless securities watchdog. It's no better elsewhere in this feckless nation. With nutless provincial wonders like these watching our money, it's no wonder so many investors support Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's call for a single securities and investment regulator.
In theory, Lacroix faces a maximum of five years and a $5 million fine for each of the 51 counts of security fraud. but because there were no criminal charges pressed, this predator may well ESCAPE jail time.
The media are yammering about Black and Mulroney and their ilk, but the real crime is that the Quebec, nay Canadian, financial system is so venal, so corrupt and so broken, the Willie Picton of the money world may be allowed to walk.
We’ve already had a bellyful of Nortel, Bre-X, Portus and a dozen other major scams in this country. The RCMP investment-fraud unit has been disbanded, because the moneychangers run the temple the way they’ve run it since Canada was build by and for corporate kleptocracies.
If there was justice in this world, Lacroix would be doing life times fifty in the worst hellhole his victims could imagine. As for Conrad, I figure he'll put his jail time to good use. He's a fine writer; may I suggest he tackle the thorny issue of Canadian corporate ethics.
As for Lacroix, boiling oil is too good for him.

Posted by Jim Duff at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Are you environmentally friendly? Ecologically aware? Bear with me by taking this little quiz.

How do you respond to ‘paper or plastic?’
Do you care whether the Mountain Equpment Co-op thinks Nalgene water bottles are injurious to your health?
Do you drive your hybrid SUV up to your cozy Mont Tremblant chalet in the Valley of The Million Murdered Trees?
Do you know who Nina is and do you believe in her gospel of unscrewing every incandescent lightbulb you own?
Will your winter holiday be a Kyoto-exempt charter flight to a beachfront resort, or cross-country skiing on local trails you can walk to?
Do you religiously recycle the boxes and containers of all the made-in-China goods you buy?
Are you willing to ration yourself to the energy consumption levels of the average Third-World family?
How much are you willing to pay for the right to consume as much energy as you want?
If you were Stephen Harper, would you shut down the tar sands?
Do you wear a sweater, or do you insist on turning up the heat?
Do you believe Al Gore is partly responsible for global climate change?
Should climate-change conferences be held in Bali, or in Nunavut?
Are you happy that Canada is being portrayed as an environmental hypocrite in a tourist destination you can never afford to visit?

Posted by Jim Duff at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday, the PM announced he was appointing former New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord as ‘Special Advisor for the Consultations on Linguistic Duality and Official Languages.’ (I’ve left the capital letters the way they appeared in the PMO announcement.) Lord will be part of some upcoming process to conduct public consultations “on the future of minority language policy as part of [a] strategy to update the Action Plan on Official Languages.” Over the next two weeks, Lord hits seven cities, where he’ll exchange pleasantries with the usual minority-language suspects to “help develop the government’s strategy on official languages.”
Smells like a mighty load of ripe and stinking manure to this farmer.
The announcement came out of Moncton, Josée Verner, the barely bilingual minister of Canadian Heritage was there, but I sure as hell didn’t see any anglo Quebec minority-right lobbyists at the photo op.
Why yesterday, I wondered. Why Moncton?
Well, golly, isn’t that a coincidence! This morning, Statistics Canada released the 2006 census numbers on language and migration. Nationally, it showed both French and English are losing ground to other languages, with French speakers now comprising barely 22 percent of the Canadian population, compared to 22.9 percent in 2001 and 26 percent in 1971. This might be lost on the ROC, but everything in Quebec is predicated on the magic quarter. Historically, Quebec has 25 percent of the population, 25 percent of the seats in Parliament, 25 percent of everything except aerospace, equalization payments and federal civil service jobs.
Much, much worse, according to the French-language survivalists, is the fact that for the first time since 1931, the number of people reporting French as their mother tongue HERE IN QUEBEC has dropped below 80 percent. Ever more calamitous, the number of English-speaking households HAS INCREASED! (Although someone called me to say they thought it was because the secessionists waged a campaign during the census to get French speakers to declare themselves English to trigger precisely this crisis.)
This has nothing to do with the ability of non-French-mother-tongue Quebeckers to speak French. According to the latest numbers, only 336,000 Quebeckers said they knew only English, while more than 3 million had a command of both English and French.
I find it profoundly disturbing that 4 million Quebeckers say they only speak French. What that says to me is they’re trapped in whatever economic death spiral their feckless pseudo-socialist leaders can foist off on them under the guise of what’s good for the French language. What’s good for the French language in Quebec is what’s good for any language anywhere — gainful, secure employment and the ability to take advantage of an increasingly mobile, polyglot planet. What happens to 4 million unilingual francophones when the socio-economic shithouse goes up in smoke?
Another alarming trend for those alarmists: They see Montreal losing its status as the second-largest French-speaking city on the planet because of the decreasing number of old-stock Quebecois. French-speaking non-French-mother-tongue Quebeckers have gone from 46 percent to 51 percent for the entire province, while here on Montreal Island, their demographic weight has increased from 41 to 46 percent. French-mother tongue Quebeckers are now in a minority on the island.
Again, folks, this is not about language. It’s about ethnicity. It’s about the fact that French-speaking Montreal now has an Asian or African face. Quebec’s language laws have guaranteed the French public school system is filled with the children of these new immigrants and that has driven the old-stock white, Catholic québécois to the suburbs, where their kids will mix with old-stock English-speaking kids, marry them and gain the right to go to English public schools. Maudit!
Complicated? Damn right. That, I suspect, is why Stephen Harper tagged Lord with the task of figuring out how to spin this demographic tale once he’d been given an advance copy of the census numbers. With Quebec as the Tories’ most likely breakthrough province, this is one constituency he can’t afford to lose.
No wonder the PM felt he had to scramble to assign Lord, and no wonder he's given the former New Brunswick PM such a short timeline to get the job done. I have no doubt Bernard Lord is praying for good weather and no media attention.

Posted by Jim Duff at 1:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)