One law for all

The Toronto Star published an opinion by York University Professor, Harvey Simmons, a political scientist specializing in fascist movements in France. His piece was what could fairly be described as “Sharia-friendly”. The irony of a non-Muslim male making a career of decrying fascism and seeing no particular danger with legalizing Sharia in Ontario is just too rich to not write about.

Simmons was marking the 5th anniversary of the successful battle by Muslim women in Canada to defeat the proposal by Muslim male political activists to establish Islamic family arbitration councils whose decisions would be enforced through the mechanism of the Ontario Arbitrations Act – a statute that was really intended to deal with commercial matters. However, the Act was broad enough to permit religious arbitrations in the Christian and Jewish communities.

The Ontario Muslim males, who have much to gain by legalizing their doctrinaire power over Muslim females, thought, “Hey, why not us?” Why not indeed? They even got the foolish socialist politician, Marion Boyd, a former Attorney-General, to write a favourable report to the Ontario government. Funny how socialism can turn your thinking ability to mush. Shame on any woman supporting implementation of Sharia to the detriment of her sister citizens.

Professor Simmons seems to have been cooed by the blandishments of the late Syed Mumtaz Ali, the former President of the Islamic Society of Canada and the creator of the proposed “Islamic Institute of Civil Justice” that there would be nothing going on in these arbitrations that violated Ontario law. How can anybody familiar with women’s rights under Sharia accept such nonsense? There is no way the equal rights that all women enjoy in Ontario do not conflict with the Sharia.

Simmons claims:

Ironically, because religious arbitration now takes place mainly outside the scrutiny of the Ontario courts, there is no way to tell whether women are being treated well or badly in informal religious arbitrations conducted by imams, rabbis or, indeed, any other arbitrator chosen by the parties involved.

What rubbish! Women in Ontario have the right to have their family matters decided in accordance with the Family Law Act. That is where they may apply for justice and that is where they can expose any unfairness in any ad hoc religious arbitrations.

For a very good examination of the problems of reconciling the Sharia with the laws of a secular liberal democracy go to this site.

More Caledonia nonsense from the Toronto Star

Angelo Persichilli had a column in yesterday’s Toronto Star that rhymes with his name; to wit, silly.

He is trying to defend the Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, Julian Fantino, over the OPP’s handling of the Caledonia file. A private citizen has launched a lawsuit that claims Mr. Fantino exceeded his authority by writing to the local municipal council threatening police retaliation if the council endorsed an anti-aboriginal protest march organized by an outsider (a non-resident of Caledonia).

Mr. Persichilli is saying that the OPP cannot police natives because they will not be backed up by the politicians. He says that this means there is no law.

Nonsense.

The law didn’t go away just because the politicians ran and hid under the nearest convenient rock, which we can all agree they did.

This Ontario Liberal government held an expensive public hearing to demonize the former Progressive Conservative government and particularly its former Premier, Mike Harris, in the government’s handling of a similar Indian occupation of a public park in Ipperwash, Ontario.

In that instance, in evicting the occupiers, a trigger-happy OPP officer shot and killed an unarmed Indian. The officer was convicted of a crime and duly sentenced.

But that wasn’t enough for the Liberals. They had to spend $50 million trying to prove that the government (the former Premier specifically) had interfered with police discretion and caused the harm. They failed. The commission exonerated the government from such charges.

Now, with the Caledonia native occupation, the chickens have come home to roost. And that roosting has been expensive. The latest estimate is that it has cost the taxpayers $65 million, not including the cost of the undisclosed settlement of the seven million dollar law suit brought by an Ontario couple against the government and the OPP because they were harassed for two years by the rampaging Indians without police protection.

Mr. Persichilli says:

There was no doubt that without a legal framework to say who was right and who was wrong, the tension in Caledonia would increase, with the real possibility that someone was going to be hurt.

Again, the OPP and its commissioner, Fantino, were asked to enforce the law in a context where the dispute was the law itself. The bottom line was simple: was the occupation legal or not?

Later he asks again:

Was it legal? I don't know, but was it legal to occupy public land? Is it legal to leave citizens without protection?

There is not a shadow of a doubt that the occupation of this land was illegal. It was not public land, like Ipperwash. It was land privately owned by a development company, which may have been subject to an as yet unsubstantiated aboriginal historical claim.

The problem, however, is not so much the fact that the Indians invaded the property and faced down the police in a show of force. Most people would have simply looked the other way and considered it an issue for the development company to sort out with the Indians and federal government.

It is what they did once they were in occupation, starting immediately with the beating of an employee of the development company who was simply trying to retrieve his blueprints and other documents from his on-site development office. He was hospitalized. Here is his picture.

And here are a number of pictures showing the acts carried out during the occupation: burning a railroad trestle, burning an electrical substation, blocking public highways with trash and burning tires, throwing a van from an overpass onto the highway, and tearing up the national flag. One thing to note in all of these pictures: the complete absence of any police presence.









Now here is a series of pictures from the other side of the disputed property – from the town side. A man is detained from waving a Canadian flag by no less than three police officers. A protest organizer is hauled away by three police officers. He was jailed and subsequently released without charge. Note the number of police vehicles present on the town side of the dispute when the town's people gathered to protest the occupation.




It is not that there are no laws to deal with the hooliganism, thuggery, arson and violence perpetrated by the Indians, Mr. Persichilli, it is simply that we lack a police force with the balls to enforce the laws we have.

And the sad thing is that this appeasement in the face of such aggression will only encourage the Indians to adopt such tactics in future land disputes.

Finally, ask yourself this question. If, instead of Mohawks, a band of Hells Angels motorcycle guys rode onto this property and carried on in the same fashion, what would the police response have been?

For readers who are unfamiliar with the Caledonia story, I refer you to this website.

Paying for injustice

There is a very sad column in today’s Toronto Sun by prominent criminal lawyer, Edward Greenspan. He is singing a song I call “The Defence Lawyer Blues”. It is a popular refrain amongst criminal lawyers.

The lyrics dwell on how misunderstood they are by the public and the politicians, how necessary they are, how underappreciated they are, and how underpaid. Most of his lament is about the payment part.

He is complaining that legal aid programs that were started by the government years ago, to ensure that the poor had the taxpayer to pick up their legal tabs and could hire good, expensive lawyers, are now not paying enough money to make it worth a lawyer’s time to take on such clients. He is concerned that the refusal by criminal lawyers to defend accused criminals will lead to unfairness, which might, by some, be equated with injustice.

He mentioned that lawyers are boycotting the defence of gang members in the recent police sweeps.

Now you may remember some of those sweeps, the ones where the cops took down the gang members, dragging them out of their Lexus’s, cracking the crystals on their Rolex watches, and breaking their solid gold bling necklaces, emptying the trunks of hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs and guns.

I had no idea until I read this column that those guys were qualified for legal aid.

I used to know a young man, 19 years of age, who was a runner for one these gangs. He was a small time dope distributor, dealing mainly in marijuana which he purchased from gang members and resold. He carried a gun and had been shot at a couple of times. He was small fry, but he cleared $12,000 a month, tax free. Eventually, the police caught him when a snitch fingered him in return for lesser charges. He got legal aid and 3 years of detention, which might well have been longer had he not had a legal aid lawyer in his corner. Personally, I think he should have been in longer.

I mention this, because I own a mortgaged home, a modest, two-bedroom bungalow, a beater of a car and I live on a pension that does not pay $12,000 a month either before or after taxes. I am considered to be a member of the “middle class” and therefore ineligible to obtain legal aid. If I want a lawyer, I have to pay for it, even if it might mean selling my home, or incurring crushing debt that I will never be able to repay. And when my young acquaintance got a lawyer, I had to pay for him as well, through my taxes.

Why is Mr. Greenspan not shedding crocodile tears on my behalf?

He says most of the legal aid money goes to family law.

That is very interesting because recently I have had some personal experience with the Family Court on behalf of one of my children who is fighting a custody battle.

My child is a single employed mother working 6 days a week, and making about $31,000 a year, before taxes. She cannot get legal aid because she is considered middle class. However, the father of the child, who is able-bodied and has been in the work force (I use that term loosely) for 14 years, and has held a job for only 6 months in all that time (in PC terms, he is motivationally-challenged) is getting legal aid for a lawyer, and so far has been fairly successful in screwing her over through the court.

I notice whenever I go to the courthouse and read the rosters in front of the court chambers that about 95% of the litigants are unrepresented by lawyers. That is because they cannot get legal aid, and like me and my daughter they cannot afford to hire the family law equivalent of Mr. Greenspan.

As we all know until now there has always been one law for the rich and one for the poor. That is because they are the only ones who can afford lawyers. But, if Greenspan is correct, it now appears the poor are joining the ranks of the middle class and they will soon find out how it feels to be denied justice in our society because of a lack of money.

Let’s all welcome the poor to our part of town. The one distinguishing feature of it is that it is lawyer-free. Not to be confused with free lawyers which is the neighbourhood they used to occupy.

My prescription for legal aid?

I would do away with it in the Family Court since very few of these actions are being fought with lawyers anyway. Lawyers do not really help in family problems because lawyers see themselves as gladiators. Would we think of solving family disputes by distributing handguns to the husband and wife? A lawyer is the legal equivalent of a handgun. Family disputes should be dealt with by a triage of counselling, mediation and arbitration (binding if necessary).

In the criminal system we should bring in a public defender department as they have in some of the American states. Such a system has flaws, of course, and may even cost more money, but the key thing is that the state is responsible for both the prosecution and the defence and the government runs a political risk if it pays to much attention to one side over the other.

This is the problem faced by Mr. Greenspan. He has no political clout because he is seen (fairly or unfairly) as a self-interested private lawyer representing a sleazy element in our society. A public defender system would have a chief mandarin as a champion to ensure that there is adequate funding, and such a person cannot easily be ignored by the government. The provincial Ombudsman should also have a role in overseeing it. And it would open the possibility that it could be made available to the middle class.

The rich will always be there to hire Mr. Greenspan, so he will not lack for a decent income.