Tasers and the lost trust in the RCMP

Most people who watched Robert Dziekanski's life end on the floor of the Vancouver airport felt horror.
But there was also anger, and a sense of trust betrayed. The actions of the RCMP that night - and in the days that followed - marked a turning point. It is hard to maintain trust in our national police force after such a dramatic failure.
The initial focus has been on the police use of Tasers. That is important. In the last four years, 18 Canadians have died after being electrocuted b the devices. Six of them, one-third of the total, have been in B.C.
The devices were introduced in the province in 1998. It seemed a great step forward. The promise was that the Taser would offer an alternative to the use of guns. Imagine being able incapacitate a crazed person waving an axe at police, instead of having to shoot to kill.
But the devices were introduced without a clear code for their use and only limited training. And it became clear that officers were using Tasers more freely and for a wider range of purposes, sometimes simply to get people to follow instructions quickly.
That was not the idea. And given the number of deaths associated with Taser use, it was a dangerous approach.
Part of the problem has been the reluctance of police to acknowledge any risk, despite the mounting toll of people who died within minutes of being Tasered.
The deaths prompted the province's Police Complaints Commissioner to launch a review, led by the Victoria police department. The report backed the use of the devices, but called for better training and stricter rules.
The devices should not be used unless people are actively resisting police, the report said. It's not enough that they're ignoring commands or gesturing wildly.
And even if they are actively resisting, the report said, unless police are being assaulted they should use the Taser as a stun gun, rather than firing the darts into the person. The difference is significant: As a stun gun the Taser is painful, but not incapacitating.
The report warned of the risk that excited delirium - a medical condition that can cause death - is associated with Taser use. And it cautioned that after being Tasered, people hog-tied and left lying on their front might be unable to breathe.
The province said it adopted the recommendations.
But the video of Dziekanski's death - along with the other reports - gives the lie to that claim.
It shows him pacing in the Vancouver airport. A Polish immigrant, he had been there 10 hours. His mother came to meet him, but couldn't find him.
Dziekanski looks agitated. He waves a chair around, pushes something on the floor. A woman appears on the video, moves close and tries to talk to him. She's not afraid. Security guards are looking on.
Then the four RCMP officers arrive. They don't hesitate or try to talk to Dziekanski. They don't confer on whether a translator is available. None of them tries to take his arm. He raises his hands. Moves away.
And they shoot him with the Taser. He screams, falls, gets shocked again and all four leap on top of him. In a short time, he stops moving. None of the officers tries CPR in the minutes captured on the video.
It's bad. But in some ways, what happened in the next few days was worse. The young Victoria man who shot the video voluntarily offered it to the RCMP; officers said they would make a copy and return it the next day. But then they refused to give it back. They would hold it until the investigations were over, they said, perhaps two years.
Meanwhile, the RCMP talked about a struggle in a crowded terminal. They said officers had tried to subdue Dziekanski.
But the terminal was deserted. They didn't try to talk to him. He didn't struggle. The RCMP description bore no resemblance to the scene on the video. It smacked of cover-up.
But the young man threatened to sue. He got the video back and - after sharing it with Dziekanski's mother - released it.
The video should bring immediate, strict controls on Taser use and an end to the current practice that sees the RCMP investigate itself in this type of case.
But nothing will bring Dzieskanski back, or restore the lost trust in Canada's national police force.

Les stumbles on guns and gangs

Whenever someone calls John Les B.C.'s top cop, I flash to Chief Wiggum on the Simpsons.
Specifically, I see Wiggum in his familiar pose, standing in front of a burning plane wreck or exploding school bus, calling out "OK folks, show's over, nothing to see here."
Whenever a concern arises about an issue in his area of responsibility as solicitor general, Les responds pretty much the same way as Chief Wiggum.
When the opposition started asking questions about problems in the Coroners Service and hundreds of incomplete child death reviews abandoned in a warehouse, Les denied there were problems.
The Ted Hughes report showed he was wrong.
When the Vancouver Sun reported that lottery retailers were winning far more prizes than they should and raised fears about lottery security, Les said there was nothing to it. Everything was fine.
An ombudsman's report and external audit have found there were major security problems, minimal controls and ineffective policing by the Gaming Policy Enforcement Branch.
When a terrible crash focused attention on safety enforcement for farmworkers, it was the same story.
Now the issue is gang violence. Things have got crazy in the Lower Mainland, with 10 killings in less than three weeks, including public executions. No one has been arrested.
West Vancouver police Chief Kash Heed believes the fragmented policing in the region helps the gangs. They roam from municipality to municipality; police forces operate, for the most part, separately. That reduces their effectiveness.
Heed raised the issue in opinion pieces. And once again, instead of acknowledging the problem, Les went into denial. Worse, he moved to the attack, calling Heed's boss, the city's mayor, to complain. The chief should just stay quiet, Les suggested. Everything that could be done to fight gangs was already being done, he promised.
Once again, the approach backfired. Les was seen as the defender of the status quo, trying to gag police.
And within 24 hours, Vancouver police announced a new regional gang squad would be created in the coming weeks. Les's claim that everything was being done looked sadly out of touch.
The gang problem is a tough one. Regional policing would obviously help, allowing officers to track gangs and their members wherever they roamed, instead of passing files and requests back and forth.
Finding ways to reduce the money to be made in drugs, most obviously by increasing the availability of legal, prescribed drugs or alternatives, would also help.
And so would reducing the supply of guns. It's chilling to read the recent sentencing decision that saw Lower Mainland criminal Steven Porsch sent to jail for 16 years for arson, assault and selling guns. Undercover officers bought a steady supply of handguns and machine guns from Porsch. For less than $3,000 you could get a Sten gun that will shot 550 rounds a minute, and some ammunition.
It was not long ago that visiting U.S. officers were always struck by one major difference in policing on this side of the border. In Canada, you did not have to approach routine traffic stop as if the driver might be armed.
But in urban centres, that has changed. Guns are common in the gang and wannabe world.
The solutions aren't simple. The weapons are largely smuggled in from the U.S. Improved border security could make that task harder.
And the government act on legislation passed four years ago that would require every gun legally imported into the country be stamped with CA - for Canada - and a serial number. The measure is designed to help police keep track of illegal firearms.
Gun lobby groups oppose the measure, which is supposed to come into effect next month. The Harper government hasn't said if it will take the next step.
The government will likely pass legislation imposing mandatory miminum sentences for gun crimes. Mandatory minimums are a bad idea, removing needed discretion from the courts and encouraging plea bargaining for charges.
Anyway, the problem in dealing with gang crime isn't the sentences. Statistics suggest most gang killings are never solved. Until people are arrested and convicted, the sentence issue is theoretical.
Footnote: As another bad week ended for Les, his ministry announced it had taken action against the Hells Angels. The province has started the legal effort to prove their Nanaimo clubhouse is either the proceeds of crime or used for crime, which would it to be seized.

Surely children deserve adequate protection

When children are at risk of being abused or neglected, their safety - their lives - can depend on a quick, thorough investigation.
The children and families ministry isn't doing that. Investigations routinely remain incomplete for months, while children are at risk and clouds hang over families.
And the situation is substantially worse now than it was a year ago, or even four years ago, when the ministry was in chaos.
The ministry's standards say that child protection investigations should be completed within 30 days.
But that's not happening. NDP critic Nicholas Simons revealed that in September there were 3,264 child protection investigations that were still incomplete more than 90 days after the files were opened. That's three times longer than the ministry standard.
More than three out of four active cases had been open longer than 30 days and were still incomplete. Half the cases were still incomplete after three months.
Worse, the situation is deteriorating. The number of cases still incomplete after 90 days was up almost 20 per cent over last year. And it was 60-per-cent higher than the backlog in 2003.
This is one of the most important and basic indicators of the ministry's effectiveness.
Social workers can never protect every child. At times, they will do their best and bad things will still happen. A boy who is apprehended will suffer in care; a girl who is left with her family will be abused.
That makes it even more critical that frontline workers are able to do the job to the best of their abilities. Their inability to complete child protection investigations signals a critical breakdown.
Children and Families Minister Tom Christensen didn't have any good answers. He noted that the ministry had added 200 social workers this year to address underfunding and staff shortages. And he said there were fewer investigations open for more than a year than in 2001 - hardly a bragging point.
Sometimes, Christensen said, investigations just take longer to do properly. Managers review cases that drag on once a month, he added.
But remember, the ministry set the standard of 30 days. It said that the risk should be assessed and any needed protection measures taken within that time.
And for thousands of children, that's not happening.
The children's ministry continues to be a problem for the Liberals, as it was for the NDP.
The day after Simons raised the issue of incomplete child protection investigations, Times Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines revealed more problems.
Earlier this year, Kines reported that children who had been sexually abused were waiting months for counselling and support, because the program's budget had been frozen for 17 years. Christensen had refused funding requests from a Victoria agency that worked with abused children and was being forced to lay off therapists.
Kines also submitted a freedom of information request for information the ministry had on the issue. He received a review done in early 2006, heavily censored.
And then he tracked down the original and found what the government had tried to hide. The censored passages reported that the 47 agencies providing services to sexually abused children "were unanimous in their view that program funding is inadequate to meet the needs." Programs for abused children had been "neglected" for several years. Children in remote communities were particularly poorly served.
It looked like a cover-up. And it also raised questions about Christensen's statements that he didn't know about funding problems. "It hasn't been identified by communities as a priority for increase," he said this spring. "I'm asking my staff questions about that to see if it's something we need to be looking at more closely."
But that was a year after the report highlighting underfunding was delivered,
Meanwhile, as all this was revealed, Sean Holman at publiceyeonline.com revealed the ministry had spent $560,000 on a truly lavish head office reno.
It's discouraging.
Footnote: I made a stupid mistake in a recent column on the release of forestland from tree farm licences. I wrote that TimberWest benefited in 2004 when the government ripped up a tree farm contract. The benefits really went to Island Timberlands, en entirely different customer. It was a bad error; I apologize.

Fall session going badly for Liberals

Three weeks into the fall session and you can see why Gordon Campbell only let MLAs sit for three days last fall.
The Liberals expected to make the Tsawwassen treaty the focus this year, celebrating a success and highlighting NDP divisions on the treaty.
Instead, they have been battered. Every few days brings another damaging revelation or more tough questions about everything from mismanagement of the out-of-control Vancouver convention centre to abuse and neglect of seniors.
It's often tough for governments when the house is sitting. Most of the time, the party in power can control the news agenda. It can decide and where to make announcements or hold press conferences; ministers can usually command some media attention.
For the opposition, it's tougher to get noticed.
But when the legislature is in session, the opposition gets its big chance. Every day, just before 2 p.m., there is question period. For 30 minutes opposition MLAs get to question cabinet ministers. (Give full credit to Premier Gordon Campbell, who doubled the time for questions as a way to make the legislature more effective.)
That's enough time for a big kick at a main topic and a briefer look at a couple of other issues.
It's not that the public pays any attention. But the 15 reporters and columnists assigned to cover the legislature do. The opposition's goal is to get them to do a story on the issue of the day, one that says the government has messed up. (No one said democracy would be pretty.)
There is a public benefit in all this. Governments don't want to be caught, so they're more careful. And when they do go wrong, the public attention brings change. Ted Hughes' report on children and youth, and the resulting changes, came about because of the relentless questioning of New Democrat Adrian Dix.
For the three weeks of this sitting, the Liberals have faced tough questions of competence and integrity.
They had to respond to questions about seniors abused and neglected in a Victoria care home. Former cabinet minister Graham Bruce's lobbying activities for the Cowichan Tribes were challenged, and are under review.
Forests Minister Rich Coleman still hasn't answered questions about why the government is ripping up tree farm licence agreements that protected forests. Companies are being handed concessions worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with no benefit for the public or justification.
The auditor general handed the Liberals another black eye, with a report on the mismanagement that allowed the Vancouver convention centre cost to escalate from $495 million to $883 million, and counting.
Once again, the government was bedeviled by problems in the children and families ministry. NDP critic Nicholas Simons revealed growing delays in completing investigations into child abuse or neglect.
Time Colonist reporter Lindsay Kines revealed the government had censored a report that said services for child sex abuse victims were inadequate and underfunded.
And then last week reporter Sean Holman revealed on www.publiceyeonline.com that the ministry had spent $560,000 - almost three times the basic estimate - for a head office renovation. A consultant was paid $40,000 to recommend ways to make it welcoming to First Nations. There's art and great interior design features.
But it's also a ridiculous waste of public money. Frontline workers are swamped; a lavish head office is offensive.
The problem for the Liberals wasn't just the questions; it was the answers. The NDP questioners grew more confident; the ministers' answers lamer.
It's good news for Carole James, who had been criticized for being unable to advance the party lately.
And it's a wake-up call for the Liberals.
But don't expect the Liberals' strong poll standing to slide much. It's not enough for the New Democrats to raise doubts about the Liberals. Carole James and company have to convince voters they can do better. And that's still a big leap.
Footnote: The downside of the session has been a plunge in basic civility in the legislature. That could reflect and NDP decision to be tougher or the increasing tension on the government side. The heckling, shouting and abuse represent a sad decline from the generally higher standard of the last two years.

Liberals betray public with forest-land giveaway

The Liberal government's willingness to hand benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars to forest company owners is staggering. It simply doesn't make sense.
The government has written contracts with forest companies covering their private land that has been included in provincial tree farm licences. The public compensated the companies handsomely to get them to sign the contracts, which ensure the land is managed and protected as timber-producing forests.
But now all the companies do is ask and the government lets them out of the agreements.
The companies make huge quick profits.
The public loses access, green space, environmental protection, forest jobs - and gets nothing.
This started in 2004. Weyerhaeuser asked the government to take 90,000 hectares out of its tree farm licence.
Ministry staff told Mike de Jong, then the forest minister, it was a bad idea. The company had already been compensated for including the land; the tougher environmental and replanting standards were worth continuing; and the agreement ensured the land stayed as forest. Communities saw this as an important social contract, staff reported.
And if the government let the company take the land out of the tree farm licence, it would have to negotiate compensation, staff said, and that would be tricky.
But de Jong over-ruled the ministry’s non-political staff and said OK to the company's request. He got nothing in compensation for taxpayers. Within months Weyerhaeuser began negotiating its sale to Brascan, which agreed to pay $1.4 billion.
Much of that value was due to De Jong's decision, which meant a $500-million windfall for the company.
Brascan executives said that getting the lands out of the tree farm licence meant an extra $18 million to $24 million a year in profits for the company, now called Island Timberlands.
And for the first time, the company could sell the land for development instead of being obligated to keep it as timber to ensure the future of the Island forest industry.
That meant a huge increase in the land's value. The company now says it has identified 38,000 hectares it wants to take out of forest use. They're worth $300 million to $450 million as is, "with a significantly higher valuation potentially achievable through value-added development activities." De Jong could have said no; nothing bad would have happened and the company had no case for demanding the gift.
He could have asked for compensation for the public or job guarantees, or at least demanded a donation of land for parks. Instead, he handed benefits worth $500 million over and got nothing in return.
Forest Minister Rich Coleman did it again this year. Western Forest Products asked him to let it out of its tree farm licence, reducing its environmental and replanting obligations and allowing more raw log exports.
And, more importantly, freeing up 70,000 acres for sale and development, including waterfront west of Victoria used by surfers, campers and tourists and land adjacent to provincial parks.
It's a gold mine for the company. And the government got nothing for the public - not money, investment commitments or a single acre protected as a park.
Coleman didn't consult anyone - politicians or public - from any of the communities. It was astonishingly arrogant. A developer has already bought the Jordan River property. He won't commit to public access to the surfing beach and camping area.
WFP is also selling another big chunk of land near Sooke Potholes Provincial Park. Just two years ago, the public helped raise money to buy land for the park. Part of the appeal was the park would be surrounded by land protected as forest. It might be logged, but it would replanted. Coleman ended that. The company now has 561 acres for sale around the potholes.
So why did he do it? Coleman says the company asked for help and he delivered. There's no evidence he saved one job or that Western Forest Products needed a handout. Coleman hasn’t released a single scrap of paper showing a review or rationale or business case for his decision.
Now the government is planning the next giveaway, in the Kootenays. Pope & Talbot has been advertising 16,000 acres currently covered by tree-farm licences for sale for development. Coleman maintains he hasn't decided whether to let the company out of the contract.
But in fact, the same developer who bought the Jordan River property has purchased a large lakefront tract from Pope & Talbot. Both the developer and the company seem confident the deal is done, despite Coleman’s claims.
Again, why would the government give a bankrupt forest company a gift worth millions? Especially when the land includes property that's important for running the business.
A company asks for a favour worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The government doesn't negotiate, or protect the public. It says sure. And you lose.

Convention centre a rival to fast ferries for failure

You could make a case that the Vancouver Convention Centre expansion is a bigger scandal than the fast ferry fiasco.
Both are examples of incompetence and overspending, revealed by the auditor general. There are depressing similarities in the way both Liberal and NDP governments mismanaged their megaprojects.
And both Liberals and NDP kept the problems and soaring costs from the public until they were forced to come clean.
The convention centre has run much farther over budget. The initial plan set a $495-million cost; that has now climbed to $883 million. The fast ferries went from $210 million to $454 million.
But there will be a convention centre at the end of it all. The fast ferries were never used and sold for about $20 million to the highest bidder.
Three things give the convention centre the edge as the worse offensive scandal. The contrast between the Liberals’ claims of competence and the mismanagement revealed in the just-released auditor general’s report makes the mess more painful.
The Liberals also betrayed their promise of an open and transparent government, concealing information about the soaring costs from the public.
And in the fast ferries fiasco, people were held accountable, though maybe not all the right people. The CEO was turfed; the board dismissed. Campbell wanted the minister to resign, though that didn’t happen.
But the Liberals have held no one to account. No one has accepted responsibility or resigned or been fired. The old Campbell would have been outraged.
Auditor General Errol Price’s report on the convention centre is grim reading. When the project was announced in 2003, the government said the expansion budget was $495 million.
That was untrue. There was no business plan or design; the only cost estimates were vague and from 2000. The $495-million figure was based on what the province hoped to spend, not what the centre would actually cost.
In 2004, Premier Gordon Campbell guaranteed the cost would not rise above the revised budget of $565 million. “This will be on time and on budget,” he said. “Count on it. There are contingencies built into the project and it’s going to be run professionally.”
That was also not true. Work on the foundation had started, but there was still no final design for the upper floors. You can’t budget when you don’t know what you’re building.
Even then the government had been warned that the real cost would be much higher.
The worst deception occurred last year. Price found Tourism Minister Stan Hagen and Finance Minister Carole Taylor were told in April 2006 that the budget — which had already risen to $615 million — was inadequate to complete the planned building.
But they didn’t tell the public or reveal the problems when asked in the legislature. It was almost a year later, this February, when then project chairman Ken Dobell said the cost would be around $800 million.
The government now says the cost will be $883 million. Price says that might not be enough to finish the building.
One of the problems the auditor general identified was the board the premier picked to manage the convention centre project. It lacked the required expertise in big project management. (Shades of the B.C. Ferries board that oversaw the fast ferries disaster.)
But what it did have was the tightest of ties to the premier’s office. The chair was Dobell, Campbell’s right hand.
This was the premier’s project. And when costs started rising, he had to know.
But the extent of the problems was kept from the public and the legislature.
That’s worrying. If the facts were revealed, the public could have decided the costs should not be allowed to mount. That other communities needed convention facilities too, perhaps, and Vancouver’s project should stay on budget to give them a shot at some money.
The centre is being funded by the province, the federal government and a Lower Mainland hotel-room tax.
But the province agreed to take responsibility for all overruns. Provincial taxpayers’ promised $223-million contribution is now up to $576 million.
It’s a big demonstration of secrecy, lack of accountability and mismanagement from a government that promised to end all three.

Booster seats and lost politicians

The great booster seat controversy is mostly depressing.
And it leaves me wondering what happened to Linda Reid, the minister responsible.
I was a big fan when the Liberals were in opposition; in government, Reid looks to have just lost her way.
Things started out fine. The government launched a campaign to encourage parents to get ready for a new law requiring older, bigger kids to use booster seats in cars.
As part of it, taxpayers picked up the tab for 2,000 booster seats. They were to go to low-income families.
But then the Liberals lost their minds. They sent the car seats out for distribution - but only to Liberal MLAs' constituency offices.
The proud Liberal politicos sent out press releases and posed for pictures, the guardians of poor kids' safety.
"Liberal MLA hands out free car seats for kids," said the headline in Burnaby Now. MLA John Nuraney said not all families could afford the car seats. "We did not want people who could not afford them to suffer because of that," he said.
"The giveaway is part of a larger initiative where the provincial Liberals are sending seats to all constituency offices across the province," the story said.
Oh, those good Liberals.
Except they weren't. The taxpayers picked up the bill. The Liberals MLAs just took the credit.
It was both sleazy and dumb, since they obviously going to be caught playing fast and loose with the facts.
And they were. The NDP asked about it in the legislature. Reid fumbled through some non-answers and fared even worse when reporters scrummed her on the issue.
The problem, fundamentally, was that she trying to defend the indefensible. It was just painful.
In the big scheme of things, trying to score phony political points off kids isn't a huge offence. The booster seats seemed to have ended up in the right parents' hands.
But it left me wondering what happens to politicians, to people like Reid.
I had a lot of time for her when the Liberals were in opposition, literally. She was the critic for the children and families ministry; I wrote about the ministry's problems - and there were a lot of them; and Reid offered useful insights.
More than that. She made a compelling case for a whole different approach. The ministry required much more money and an end to constant restructuring, Reid said. Front-line workers needed a lot more support and more work had to be done on prevention.
And the government should start by figuring what families and children at risk need to thrive, and what that would cost, Reid said. Even the government couldn't afford to do it all, the work should start with a needs-based budget.
Reid seemed knowledgeable, pragmatic and passionate about the ministry and what it could be doing to make peoples' lives better. It wasn't political stuff. It was about doing the right thing.
But then the Liberals were elected. Reid didn't get children and families; that went, disastrously, to Gordon Hogg. She became a junior minister for issue affecting young children.
And everything changed. Her government didn't increase support for the ministry; it announced reckless cuts to the budget for children and families.
Instead of stability, the government launched a disastrously botched re-organization. The process is in its sixth year now, and the future is still unclear.
Maybe that's just the way it is. You say one thing in opposition, and then abandon not just the policies you advocate, but also the principles behind them once you're in government.
Or maybe it's all more complicated. You fight for the right thing in caucus or cabinet and then go along, even if you're betraying the principles you once advocated. You can do more good from inside and all that.
And then you find yourself standing in a hallway, or the legislature, defending - badly - a cockamamie scheme to play political games with a kids' safety program.
You know it's wrong, but there are you are. _
Footnote: How embarrassing was the whole deal? Premier Gordon Campbell handed out booster seats; the photos were prominent on his website. But once the NDP started asking questions, they were shuffled out of the spotlight, like some out-of-favour Soviet general erased from the annual May Day parade photos in Red Square.

Time for tougher controls on police Taser use

The bad thing isn’t necessarily that so many people are dying after being tasered by police.
What’s really worrying is that police forces - at least officially - don’t see any connection between zapping people and their almost immediate deaths.
Robert Dziekanski is the latest victim. His mother, who lives in Kamloops, worked two jobs and saved for years to bring her 40-year-old son to Canada. He flew into in Vancouver, but there were delays in getting into the terminal. She missed him at the airport.
He wandered for 10 hours, unable to get anyone to understand him. Then Dzienkanski started acting aggressively in the airport, alarming people. RCMP officers subdued him with a Taser. He died. His mother is wondering what happened.
The official police position is that Tasers are safe. But at least 17 people have died after being shocked with the devices in Canada in the last five years, six in this province. That seems more than coincidence.
And it’s significant. In B.C., police have only had to shoot more than three people in a year than once in the past decade. Officers are remarkably restrained in their use of weapons, no matter how great the personal risk.
Tasers were proposed in B.C. in 1998 as an alternative to deadly force. They were to be used when officers were ready to draw their guns.
That seemed a very good idea. Anything that gives police an alternative to shooting someone - without putting themselves at increased risk - is good.
But it’s impossible to know if that’s how the stun guns have been used in B.C. The impression is that Tasers have been used as a convenient way to subdue people.
When Victoria police studied Tasers for the B.C. Police Complaints Commissioner in 2004, they found that about one-third of the cases in which it had been used in Canada involved people who were resisting arrest - perhaps pulling an arm away from an officer, or ignoring an order. They weren’t hitting or kicking.
There’s certainly been no evidence that the RCMP had any reason to consider shooting Dziekanski. He had no weapon; there was no imminent danger in the largely empty airport. At least three RCMP officers were there to deal with one angry man.
Don’t get me wrong. Long ago, as a reporter, I did a ride-along with an RCMP officer in Alberta. She stopped a beat-up car full of men on the highway. I sat there with my notebook, wondering what I’d do if things went sideways and we were suddenly fighting five big guys. A Taser would have been reassuring.
The issue here is not the value of the weapon. It’s the need for an accurate assessment of the risks, so that the Tasers can be used to ensure police safety while not subjecting civilians to the risk of death.
Police and the manufacturer argue Tasers don’t kill. But their use has been part of a sequence of events that does. The person being zapped is generally in state of excited delirium, often due to cocaine use. They are then restrained on their stomachs, with hands and feet tied behind their backs. And then they stop breathing and die.
The 2004 report made several recommendations around police training and the need for mandatory reporting anytime a Taser is used. It called for specific training for all officers in excited delirium and an end to “maximum restraint” positions that sees suspects hogtied on their stomachs.
Some of the recommendations have been adopted; others are still not in place. But the continuing toll be taken by Taser use indicates that more needs to be done.
And the greatest concern remains the reluctance of police to acknowledge the risks or that Tasers can kill.
When people are belligerent or violent, there is no easy solution for police. All the alternatives, from pepper spray to baton to talking, carry risks.
But Tasers have proven particularly dangerous. It’s time to ensure their use is treated almost as seriously as discharging a gun in the line of duty.
Footnote: The Dzienkanski case raises once again another problem. The investigation into his death is being conducted by the RCMP, just as the force investigated its officer’s actions when Ian Bush was shot and killed inside the Houston RCMP detachment. The public interest demands an independent investigation.

Slow progress on coming pine beetle disaster

The news is getting and grimmer on the pine beetle front. Yet the crisis still doesn't seem to have really captured the political and public attention it deserves.
It's difficult to grasp the scale of the economic problems ahead. B.C. has never experienced anything like it. Only the collapse of the east Coast cod fishery offers a comparable disaster.
The province has released its latest report on the update, with yet more bad news.
The timber killed by the pine beetle appears to be losing its value as lumber faster than expected, reducing the amount that can be salvaged. And there is some evidence the beetle is attacking more of the younger trees that were considered safe from destruction.
Here's the problem.
The Interior forest industry is running flat out now to harvest pine trees before they're dead and worthless. The government has offered cheap stumpage and bumped the annual allowable cut.
Last year, about 46 million cubic metres of timber were harvested for saw logs. That's about 25 per cent more than before the beetle disaster. The Forest Ministry report said that rate could last about four years, until the timber is gone. The annual allowable cut will be reduced to about half the current levels.
And the harvest will be one-third below the amount of timber being cut down and sawed into two by fours and other lumber back in "normal" times.
There will still be forestry, using other species, pines that survive and young pine trees reaching maturity. But for 50 years -- almost two generations of workers -- the traditional industry will be at half its current levels.

The impact will vary by region. But in the Quesnel area, for an example, the timber supply will be cut by some 35 per cent. About 75 per cent of the 12,000 jobs in the region are linked in some way to the forest industry. That means about 3,100 jobs at risk -- one in four employed people in the community. A similar economic disaster in the Lower Mainland would mean a loss of more than 400,000 jobs within a period of a few years. (And, I expect, it would mean a lot more government action.)
That kind of job loss creates a chain reaction. People have to leave town, so stores and other businesses suffer. The forced sale of houses hurts property values. Schools lose students. It's a nasty spiral.
At the same time the government released its forests report, it issued a progress report on efforts to come up ways to help the affected communities deal with the economic crunch.
So far, the province has been more successful at ensuring the wood gets logged than at dealing with the long-term crisis.
The progress report isn't that reassuring.
There's a big replanting push. The report talks about funding for research on ways to use the damaged wood and efforts to find new markets. Bizarrely, it goes on at length about the fact that pine-beetle wood will be used for the roof of the Olympic speed skating oval.
The government is also gathering geological information to try to lure mining companies into the affected areas. It hopes the wood can be burned to generate power and is looking at encouraging farmland.
But the rate of progress is slow --the report talks about a six-parcel agricultural pilot project. And the report's section on "Maintaining strong communities" is a little surreal. It talks about the LocalMotion program to fund bike paths and about Spirit Squares -- hardly at the centre of economic renewal.
There is more going on.
The federal government has put up $36 million for economic diversification. The Northern Development Initiative Trust has set aside $32 million for economic renewal programs and community and regional groups are at work.
But the crisis is just a few years away and the challenge enormous. And so far, the urgency of the crisis just doesn't seem to have hit home.
Footnote: The other big questions are around what will happen with the massive reforestation effort. There's concern about the threat the beetle might pose to trees as they mature and concern about the effects of global warming on the forest during the 50 years the trees will take to mature.

Lobbying allegations get legislature off to stormy start

It's going to be a crabby 18 months until the next election, at least based on the first week of the fall legislative sitting.
The MLAs have only been back four days as I write this, but things are already pretty rowdy.
The New Democrats have been hammering at two issues - seniors' care and the alleged lobbying activities of former cabinet minister Graham Bruce.
And the government has been fighting back, especially on the Bruce affair. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mike de Jong, a scrappy performer in the legislature, has led the defence.
It's a changed tone. After the 2005 election, both sides made a real effort to maintain basic civility in the legislature. Things appear to be heading, sadly, back to the bad old days.
The questions about Bruce's activities raise the kinds of issues that are always going to heat things up.
The Vancouver Sun kicked things off, with a report that Bruce had been lobbying the provincial government on behalf of the Cowichan Tribes since 2005. But, the paper reported, he had never signed up with the province's lobbyist registry.
The activities also raised potential problems under conflict-of-interest rules, the report noted. Former cabinet ministers are barred from paid lobbying at the provincial level for two years after they leave office. Bruce started working for the tribes within months of being defeated in 2005.
The lobbyist registry was a part of the Liberal election platform in 2001. They said that the public should know who was lobbying politicians and bureaucrats and what they were seeking. That way, people could judge for themselves whether anything questionable was happening.
It seemed a good idea. Lobbying has become increasingly big business. A lot of the consultants are people with close ties to the political parties - ex-politicians or political staff.
There was a perception that paying for access was part of doing business. Gordon Campbell said that should stop, and the lobbyist registry was the solution.
Bruce initially said he met with Campbell and two ministers to seek funding for the Cowichan Tribes' effort to host the 2008 North American Indigenous Games.
By midweek, the Cowichan Tribe issued a news release criticizing the NDP for raising the issue. Bruce was hired to raise money from local governments, corporate sponsors and others, the band said.
But in the legislature, the NDP cited minutes of tribal committee meetings in which Bruce is quoted as saying he was calling in favours from his former colleagues to get funds released. He was paid $121,000 for work for the tribe.
De Jong said there couldn't have been any lobbying, because B.C. had agreed in 2003 to provide $3.5 million to the games.
But that's not exactly what the government said in announcing the funding in June 2006. It acknowledged the 2003 federal-provincial agreement, but the deal wasn't quite the same as de Jong now claims. "It was agreed Canada and the host province/territory would each contribute 35 per cent to a maximum of $3.5 million," the news release said. Note, up to $3.5 million, not a promise to provide that much.
Bruce hasn't done any interviews since the first Sun story. He released a statement, saying he didn't have to register as a lobbyist. The act doesn't cover lobbying activities by First Nations or their employees, he said, and he spent less than 20 per cent of his time lobbying, the threshold for registration.
James has asked the conflict commissioner to investigate. The information and privacy commissioner, who has responsibility - sort of - for the lobbyist registry.
The whole affair - following similar controversy over former deputy minister Ken Dobell's failure to register - adds to doubts that the lobbyist registry is working.
And the Liberals' defence in both cases rests in part on the notion that the projects were worthwhile, so everyone should just ease up. That's an attitude that eventually gets governments in trouble.
Footnote: There's a whole other aspect to this affair. Much of the information has come from tribal committee meetings released by unhappy band members. The minutes suggest treaty funds borrowed from the government were used to pay Bruce until he could get the provincial grants.

Time to find out if government is selling your resources too cheaply

There’s a big uproar next door in Alberta, one that could end the Conservatives’ 36-year domination of the legislature. And one that could spill over into B.C.
The issue is oil and gas royalties, and whether the government has been selling the province’s resources off far too cheaply.
Since B.C.’s royalty rates have at least partly been shaped by the desire to be competitive with Alberta, that leaves some questions about whether the public has been shortchanged here.
It certainly looks like Albertans lost out. New Premier Ed Stelmach set up a blue-ribbon panel to review the province’s take from oil and gas resources. It reported last month, and said the government had been failing to get full value, giving the companies non-renewable resources on the cheap.
The panel recommended an immediate increase of about 20 per cent, worth an extra $2 billion a year. (The industry, naturally, is outraged.)
Things got worse for the Alberta government. The province’s auditor general released a report this month that said the government knew it could increase royalties by $1 billion to $2 billion a year without losing any economic activity, but didn’t act.
The numbers are much smaller in B.C., and the resource mix is different. Oil and oilsands aren’t a factor.
But Energy Minister Richard Neufeld has cited the need to compete with Alberta in announcing natural gas royalty cuts here. If Alberta has been under pricing the resource, then perhaps so has B.C.
The people of the provinces own the oil and gas. The government auctions the right to explore and drill on sections of land. The companies then pay a royalty on each unit of gas they produce. Effectively, they’re buying it wholesale from the public and then reselling it.
There’s no science to setting gas royalties. It’s like a used-car deal: The buyer tries to pay as little as possible, the seller strives to get as the highest price.
But there’s a difference. With a used car, the seller is usually just looking to get the best price within a week or two. He doesn’t want to stick the rusty Accord in the garage and wait a few years. (Since buyers know that, they gain some advantage).
But with nonrenewable resources - like natural gas - it’s a different story. The gas will almost certainly get more valuable as the years go by. The government can drive a tough bargain; if the energy companies don’t pay now, they might in 10 years.
And there’s an argument against selling off non-renewable resources quickly, at the expense of future generations.
But governments don’t always think long term. They need to get elected every four years. And for them, it might be worth selling the resource a little quickly to get revenue - and jobs - right now.
There’s no doubt the government has focused successfully on increasing the pace of gas production since the Liberals were elected in 2001. The measures went beyond royalty changes and included reduced regulation, road-building support and other moves to encourage companies.
The energy ministry says it constantly monitors the royalty regime to make sure that the rates are appropriate - at a level that encourages companies to invest here, not in Alberta or some other jurisdiction, but not too low.
Yet last year, when the NDP asked basic questions about the costs and benefits of some royalty cuts, it took the ministry four months to come up with information that should have been readily available if the royalties were being monitored.
Anyway, the Alberta energy ministry said it was monitoring royalties closely too.The two provinces’ royalty regimes weren’t identical, but they were linked in the name of competitiveness. If Alberta is leaving money on the table, B.C. might be too.
Fortunately, it’s easy enough to check. B.C.’s auditor general just needs to do the same kind of review his counterpart in Alberta did.The public would be well-served by the answers, whatever they reveal.
Footnote: The whole issue raises - once again - the idea of directing a share of nonrenewable-resource revenues to a heritage fund. That would reduce the incentive for governments to sell of the resource for short-term benefits and leave future generations with a pool of money to cushion the blow when the boom years are over.

Session should end electoral boundaries mystery

One of the interesting things to come in next week's fall legislature session will be Gordon Campbell's plan for new electoral boundaries.
The premier over-ruled the independent Electoral Boundaries Commission last month. He rejected the ridings the commissioners created under legislation intended to prevent political interference in the process. So far, the response to the Campbell's intervention has been mostly positive.
The commission's recommendations included adding five new ridings - four in the Lower Mainland and one in the Okanagan - to reflect population growth.
And it proposed reducing the number of seats in rural B.C. by three to offset the increase in growing areas. The legislature would have gone from 79 to 81 seats.
The proposal to cut the number rural seats didn't go over well.
So Campbell said he was intervening to over-rule the commissioners. The government would pass new legislation this fall, ordering the commission to protect the three rural seats.
The commission didn't do anything wrong. Its mandate under the law was to look at the province's changing population and come up with boundaries that would ensure each MLA would represent about the same number of people. The act
requires ridings to be within 25 per cent of the average population size, although there is an opportunity for larger deviations in exceptional circumstances.
With populations falling - or growing slowly - in some areas, the result would be fewer, larger ridings in those regions.
That meant the Kootenays representation would go from four to three; Cariboo-Thompson from five seats to four; and the north from eight to seven ridings.
Over all, the Lower Mainland and Okanagan would gain power; the rural areas would lose. But that's the nature of representative democracy.
The political kickback was strong though, and Campbell reacted. But exactly what he has in mind remains mysterious.
Remember, the commissioners only proposed adding five new seats to urban areas. So even if the instructions are to protect the three rural seats that faced elimination, the legislature would only need to go to 84 members.
Campbell says the commissioners will be ordered to include a total of eight additional seats, taking the legislature to 87 MLAs.
Campbell didn't say where the extra three seats would go, or how that would be decided.
But it looks like the intent is to add not just five seats to urban areas, but eight.
And that has NDP leader Carole James - who supported protecting the three rural seats - crying foul. She says Campbell is trying to create more safe Liberals seats in the Lower Mainland and in the process reducing overall rural
representation.
It's a bit of a mess. The Electoral Boundaries Commission worked for 18 months and spent $3 million working on new riding boundaries under the law. It had hearings set for this fall.
Campbell turned that upside down and it's not yet clear how it will be put back together. The legislation this fall will have to answer the questions about how much freedom the commission will have under his new plan.
One way or another, it's going to cost more money. Eight more MLAs means millions more in salary, support staff, constituency offices and the rest. (That's all a bit ironic given Campbell's 1996 campaign "Pledge with taxpayers"
that promised the number of MLAs would be reduced to less than 60.)
And it's going to make time tight. The new boundaries have to be in the hands of Elections BC within the next eight months. There could be a lot of work to do and little time for public consultation.
The biggest worry is the precedent Campbell is setting. The Electoral Boundaries Commission was established to prevent the party in power from setting boundaries that would improve its candidates' chances. In the U.S., congressional seats
have been so distorted that incumbents have a huge advantage.
Now Campbell's intervention is raising questions about a return to politically influenced electoral boundaries.
Footnote: The changes should be good news for proponents of the single-transferable-vote system of proportional representation. A referendum will be held on the system at the same time as the 2009 election. The increased number
of seats makes the system more representative, particularly in rural areas.

Fuzzy battle plans in B.C.'s climate-change war

There’s likely one question on most peoples’ minds after Premier Gordon Campbell’s big climate-change speech.
What’s he talking about?
At the Union of B.C. Municipalities last week Campbell said the climate-change battle is as significant as the two world wars Canada has fought. But when it came to our marching orders, he didn’t really have that much new to offer.
The premier promised laws to set tough limits on emissions in B.C. — far stricter than the targets set by the Harper government or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he had announced the same limits in the throne speech in February. And the how of it all is still mostly a mystery.
Here are the basics. By 2020, B.C. is committed to reducing missions to 33-per-cent lower than today’s level. (Even as the population grows to more than five million.) It’s an ambitious target that reflects our desire to see a real action on global warming; interim targets will be set for 2012 and 2016. But how we get there is still pretty vague.
A “blue-ribbon” Climate Action Team, with representatives from environmental organizations, business and industry, the scientific community and First Nations will set interim targets by next summer, Campbell said.
He promised regional meetings on reductions in forestry, mining, energy, landfills and agriculture. Municipalities will get more power to give incentives to green developers and B.C. will adopt California standards for vehicle emissions. (The only money attached to any of the activities was a $50-million commitment for new buses.) And Campbell announced that the government would become “carbon neutral” by 2010.
That doesn’t mean that the government is going to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions — or carbon-dioxide emissions, to use another term — to zero. Instead, the government’s solution will be found in Campbell’s announcement of a new B.C. Carbon Trust.
The trust will sell emission credits to government, business and individuals. The theory is that it will then use the money to support projects that achieve an equivalent reduction in emissions.
Take an example. The premier announced B.C. would immediately be carbon-neutral in its government travel. When Campbell hops on a float plane or Helijet to spend the day in Victoria, and then flies back to Vancouver, he generates about one-sixth of a tonne of greenhouse gases in the round trip.
The trust will sell emission credits at $25 a tonne. So if the premier sends it a cheque for $4, his trip will be carbon neutral. The trust will then spend the money in a way that results in a one-sixth of tonne reduction in emissions somewhere else. It will plant some trees, improve transit or subsidize a windmill so less natural gas is burned to generate power.
The carbon-credit trading deal Campbell has entered into as part of the Western Climate Initiative takes a similar approach. B.C., Manitoba, California and five other states have set emission limits and agreed to establish a carbon-credit trading system by next summer. Jurisdictions that are under their limits will sell the credits to those that can’t cut emissions enough.
It’s a reasonable approach. Organizations know they have to pay for each tonne and have an incentive to reduce their emissions. And a similar market in the European Union — after some initial difficulties, mostly around setting emission caps fairly — has by most accounts worked well.
But these kinds of exercises are also tricky. For example, the B.C. Carbon Trust might not achieve real reductions with the money it takes in.
And setting the cost of credits, in non-market versions like the trust, is a challenge. If the cost is too high, the economy could be hurt; too low and it becomes a cheap licence to continue business as usual. At $25 a tonne, B.C. could achieve half its goal for 2020 by writing an annual cheque for $500 million. (Though $25 is in the ballpark of the emission value set by the active markets.)
There are questions about other aspects of the province’s plans. Campbell has set up both a cabinet committee on climate action and a $4-million climate secretariat within the premier’s office. The committee has had 177 presentations from industry, green groups, scientists and ministries, he said. But not one has been made public.
The secretariat, with six senior managers, hasn’t produced one report on its work. And although Campbell said the government has already identified ways to meet up to 80 per cent of the 2020 goal, the public is still in the dark about what’s ahead — the costs, the opportunities, the industry issues.
None of this is to criticize the commitment. Campbell has grabbed the climate-change issue and set some tough goals. But setting targets without telling the public anything about how they’ll be achieved raises concerns about the soundness of the government’s plans.

Subs look like very expensive lemons

I mostly write about provincial issues, but every now and then something comes along that's too bizarrely interesting to ignore.
This time, it's Canada's submarines. I've made some misguided purchases in my day, but never anything that looked quite so dramatically flawed.
HMCS Victoria is in drydock here and the Victoria Times Colonist's report on the state of the sub had a decidedly surreal quality.
The Victoria is one of the four used submarines Canada bought from Britan in 1998, taking delivery in 2000. The plan was to spend six months getting it ready for service in Halifax and then set out to sea.
But the six months stretched into three years, The sub sailed for Esquimalt, its home base, arriving with flags flying and a band waiting dockside to celebrate.
Then it went straight into 10 more months of repairs for new problems.
It sailed for a few months at sea, and then a fire on a sister sub, the Chicoutimi, killed a sailor on its voyage from England. The Victoria was pulled from service for another seven months.
The sub was ready to sail again by May 2005. But by the fall it was into drydock here for what was supposed to be a two-year repair program. It should have been back at sea by now.
But the Times Colonist reported the navy is now hoping for a 2009 launch. Making the submarine usable and safe is going to take almost four years - twice as long as planned.
The submarines cost almost $790 million when Canada bought them. There's no ready tally of the money sunk into them since, but the Victoria repairs have more than equalled the purchase price.
Since Canada took possession in October 2000, the HMCS Victoria has actually been in service for 115 days.
For every day of use, there have been three weeks of repairs and refitting.
By the time the sub is ready to go - if it meets the new deadline - it will have been out of service 96.5 per cent of the time since delivery.
It doesn't seem like a success story. In seven years, the HCMS Victoria has actually been used for its intended purpose for four months. The rest of the time the repair bills have been mounting.
What's weird is that no one seems particularly perturbed that we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on submarines that mostly haven't worked.
The Victoria is not an anomaly. Only one of the three other submarines is functioning. The Chicoutimi has been tied up since the fire; work will start on a major overhaul after the Victoria is done in 2009.
And these repairs and delays weren't part of the plan. When the navy bought the used submarines - which had been mothballed by Britain for four years - officers talked about them being in service by the end of 2001.
But the politicians, the public, seem remarkably understanding about what looks like a bad deal.
What makes it even more worrying is that the Canadian forces, in part because of the new combat role in Afghanistan and in part because of the supportive Conservative government, appear about to go on a shopping spree. They're looking at new fighters, a $4-billion purchase. New transport and search-and-rescue aircraft, $3.2 billion. A long list from the Navy. Drones,artillery, trucks tanks - again, a second-hand deal.
All in, the price tag is something like $22 billion and counting. Given the experience with the submarines, that should make a lot of Canadians nervous.
Especially because there seems some confusion about just what the equipment is for - whether the government is preparing Canada for a succession of overseas wars like the one in Afghanistan.
I'm sure buying used subs is tricky. But by any objective standards - including the ones the government and Canadian forces brass set when they bought the ships - this has gone wildly off the rails.
Footnote: So why submarines, anyway? Are we going to be sinking interlopers in Canadian waters? Or heading off to countries unknown to spy on their fleets? "Submarines excel at defending, surveillance and intelligence gathering," Sen.
Colin Kenny offered earlier this year. "Even with modern technology, submarines are difficult to detect. The mere presence of submarines defending Canada's coasts is a deterrent to potentially hostile vessels."

Harper’s vagueness on big issues disappointing

I’m getting the feeling Stephen Harper just doesn’t trust us.
On two critical issues - the war in Afghanistan and climate change – Harper is unwilling to just say what he thinks Canada should do and let us judge whether he’s picking the right course.
It’s like we’re not quite smart enough, and the government needs to coax us along until we see the right way — his way.
Harper headed to New York this week to a United Nations conference aimed at saving the Kyoto Protocol - or at least developing an updated version.
He could have offered a clear vision, even one that argued that efforts to reduce greenhouse gases shouldn’t be allowed to hurt economic growth. That’s a legitimate position.
Instead, his 500-word speech was full of platitudinous generalities. (It’s online at the www.canada.gc.ca. One of the many great things about the Internet is that you don’t have to rely on people like me to assess such things; you can read them yourselves in three or four minutes and form your own judgments.)
The purpose of the meeting was to come up with a successor to the 1998 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
But Harper didn’t actually utter the word Kyoto — not to support the agreement, or to say it was too tough, or unrealistic.
The message, basically, was that every country should try hard to reduce emissions and Canada would do its bit.
“There is an emerging consensus on the need for a new, effective and flexible climate change framework, one that commits all the world’s major emitters to real targets and concrete action against global greenhouse-gas emissions,” Harper said.
What does that mean, in the language of real people? Do you pay attention to “flexible,” or “real targets?” Or is it just politican-talk?
At the same time, Harper revealed Canada was joining an alternate climate-change coalition that
t includes the U.S, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea. That group has rejected mandatory targets for greenhouse-gas emissions.
It’s a big shift away from a UN-backed climate-change plan with hard commitments, towards a much softer approach. (Canada was also set to participate in a U.S.-led greenhouse-gas conference this week.)
Our government wants a shift from absolute greenhouse-gas reduction commitments to intensity-based targets. If Alberta is increasing oilsands production, then greenhouse-gas emissions should be allowed to increase, Harper says. The goal should just be to reduce emissions per barrel of oil production.
Perhaps the Harper government does not believe a UN agreement to replace Kyoto is necessary, or in Canada’s interests. Perhaps it is opposed in principle to strict emission limits as a threat to the economy.
But in any case, the government — elected in January 2006 — should be ready to set out its position for Canadians.
Harper’s stance on our forces’ role in the war in Afghanistan is just as unclear.
Earlier this month Defence Minister Peter Mackay said NATO had already been told not to count on Canada’s participation in its current role when the mission ends in February 2009. His officials rushed to say he didn’t mean it.
This week, Mackay said the government will tell NATO whether Canada will extend the combat mission by next April.
That would leave the alliance just 10 months to find a replacement or adjust its battle plans. Given the reluctance of any other NATO nations to accept a combat role, that’s irresponsible.
Again, the government must have a position on the future of the mission. Why not trust Canadians, set out its policy and begin the debate?
Certainly, there is likely political advantage in delay. But Harper was elected in part because Canadians were tired of governments that put political advantage ahead of straight talk. He was supposed to be the straight guy, after Mulroney, Chretien and Martin. The one who trusted us.
And right now, it’s hard to feel trusted by this government.
Footnote: One factor in all this is the potential for an election if the opposition parties decide to defeat the government when Parliament resumes sitting next month, with the climate change and the war likely key issues. Vagueness can work well in election campaigns, unfortunately.

Another big gift, from you to a forest company

It didn’t take Western Forest Products long to cash in on the big gift the government handed the company earlier this year.
It wasn’t really from the government. Taxpayers and Vancouver Island communities actually paid for the present. Forests Minister Rich Coleman just wrapped it up and handed it over on your behalf.
Western Forest Products has announced it plans to put 4,450 acres of great real estate on the market. The land includes waterfront property along the coast west of Victoria – the kind of real estate that will have people lining up, waving their chequebooks.
That’s just the first step. All in, Western Forest Products has 70,000 acres available for sale, much of it with good development potential. Waterfront lots adjacent to some of the land are selling at $400,000 an acre.
This time last year, the company couldn’t likely have sold a single acre. The land was part of the its Vancouver Island tree farm licence, That meant it was managed as if it was Crown land, with higher environmental and forest sustainability standards. Raw log exports were limited.
And the tree farm licence required that the land stay in forestry, so there would be trees and jobs a hundred years from now.
But in February, Coleman ordered the land removed from the tree-farm licence. The company needed help, he said. The government was willing to sacrifice the public interests protected by the tree farm licence to give a break to the shareholders.
Western Forest Products was quick to take advantage of the chance. It has just put out “for sale” signs on 4,450 acres, including big stretches of the Pacific coast between Victoria and Jordan River, a popular surfing and camping spot.
There’s a good argument that the highest-value use for the land is housing for rich retirees. Certainly that’s what’s WFP has decided.
But there are a couple of problems here. First, the people of B.C. paid a big price to have those lands included in the tree farm licences. Back in the 1950s the provincial government was keen to get companies to roll their private land holdings into their licences. The government thought that way the land would be managed for the long-term benefit of British Columbians and the future of the forest industry would be protected.
And it was willing to pay to make sure that happened. The government figured out what the companies would lose by including the land in their tree farm licences, and awarded them the equivalent value in Crown timber.
But when the current government agreed to release the land from the tree-farm licences, it didn’t ask Western Forest Products for any compensation. Coleman didn’t even ask the company to donate a portion of the land for parks.
There was no consultation with the affected communities, who were not only suddenly facing big development pressures but also a serious loss of jobs. As the forestland based is reduced, the industry has to shrink.
This is the second time the Liberal government has enriched a forest company at public expense. In 2004, Weyerhaeuser asked the government to let it take 220,000 acres out of its tree farm licences, much of it around Port Alberni. The benefits to the company would be huge – an extra $18 million to $24 million a year in extra profits, plus the ability to sell of the land for real estate. Figure a $200-million gain for the corporation.
But what about the public? The ministry prepared briefing notes on the request. The officials assumed Weyerhaeuser would pay taxpayers compensation if the land was removed.
Even with that assumption, the senior ministry staff recommended that the government say no. Communities and workers considered the tree farm agreement a “social contract” that ensured local areas benefited from the forests and that sustainable management would mean jobs for their children, they told the minister. (That concern was prescient; the change allowed more log exports, cost local jobs and has resulted in logging practices that residents say have damaged the environment.)
But the politicians ignored the advice of the ministry professionals and gave the company what it wanted.
Now Coleman has done it again.

Coming soon - for-profit social services?

Jody Paterson takes the first look at a big change in social services in B.C.
All programs to help people with disabilities find jobs and get off income assistance are now to be provided by Arizona-based Providence Service Corp., an American company with that runs for-profit operations providing governments with everything from child protection to probation services to reform schools.
It's a good business niche, the company notes, citing stats to encourage investors - more than 40 million Americans now living in poverty; almost five million adults released every year on parole; two million children needing protective care.

Coalbed methane ups ante in B.C.-Montana mining fight

The big fight between Montana and B.C. over mining in the Flathead Valley is heating up again.
And this time, since coalbed methane is involved, the battle is likely really on.
It's a mistake to dismiss the dispute. Any kind of cross-border spat can get complicated and costly in a hurry. Just look at the big fight over the proposed power plant across the U.S. border from Abbotsford. The mining battle is already starting to get high-level attention in Washington - the U.S. State Department has complained; Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson has been defending B.C.; Premier Gordon Campbell and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer have just exchanged letters on the issue. Now the whole dispute is threatening to get bigger, with the Americans complaining about possible coalbed methane development in the same area. That's even more of a hot button in Montana, in part because of the industry's poor record in the western U.S.
The starting point for all this is a proposed coal mine in the Kootenays about 30 kilometres from the U.S. border. The B.C. government already barred the owner, Cline Mining, from developing a coal property closer to the U.S. It thinks this one is OK.
But Montana's politicians are united in opposition. The mine would be in the headwaters of the Flathead River, which forms the border of Glacier National Park.
There are lots of political angles. The loudest opponent is Max 'Blame Canada' Baucus, a long-time Democratic senator who was a hawk in the softwood lumber dispute.
For any politician, it's a great opportunity to score painless points by talking tough about a foreign country and looking all pro-environment. But the Montana politicians - backed by a pretty sophisticated environmental movement - have already started to turn the spotlight on B.C. environmental approval standards. They note, for example, that the mining operation wouldn't be allowed near the river within Montana. (They don't note that the state is encouraging coal mining and coalbed methane in other areas.) The other big advantage the Montanans have is support from within B.C. And that's going to get much stronger once more people in the province are aware of the interest in coalbed methane.
The provincial is keen on coalbed methane development and has sold more than $25 million worth of drilling rights in the last five years. So far, there are no commercial developments.
Coalbed methane is natural gas trapped in cracks in coal seams and the rocks around them.
It's a good clean fuel. But there's a catch. The cracks also often hold water, sometimes contaminate, and it has to be pumped out and disposed of as part of the process. The industry has left some big messes in its wake. Now British Petroleum wants to start drilling test wells in the Crowsnest coal field next year, an area that includes the upper Flathead. The company believes the waste water can be re-injected into the ground. The Montana politicians are skeptical, and a lot of people in the region will be too. Coalbed methane is already an issue. Shell's effort to drill test wells for coalbed methane in the Klappan Valley was stalled by a First Nations blockade this month. The company applied for an injunction, but abandoned the effort. Wisely, perhaps. As the blockade continued, eight environmental groups spent $20,000 on an ad in the European edition of the Financial Times condemning Shell's plans. The ad referred to the valley as the Sacred Headwaters, source of the Nass, Stikine and Skeena rivers. Shell was portrayed as the despoiler of one of the world's great wildernesses. It's effective stuff. BP can expect a similar reaction, except with a U.S. protest thrown in. Baucus promises ""a massive and unpleasant fight from Montana that will end badly." There is actually a reasonable case that coalbed methane can be produced safely. But the government hasn't been able to make it. And it will get tougher now that the battle has gone international.
Footnote: There's coalbed methane around much of the province. Quinsam Coal and Cornerstone Gas plan to drill test wells in Campbell River as early as this fall, hoping coal fields in the area produce methane.

Time for some honest answers on Afghanistan

If Canadians are entitled to straight talk from their government on any issue, it's the war in Afghanistan.
Instead, it feels like we are being conned, either misled or kept in the dark to suit the government's political agenda.
It's a poor way to approach such an important issue. Families are sending their loved ones off to war. They deserve clear answers from their government.
The basic question is simple: Does the government support continuing our military mission in Afghanistan once the current commitment ends in February 2009?
Getting a straight answer has proved impossible. It sounded like Defence Minister Peter MacKay was providing real information earlier this month in a television interview. He was asked if Canada should be telling NATO what our plans are - after all, the mission ends in less than 18 months.
"As far as the signal that has been sent already, our current configuration will end in February 2009," he said. "Obviously the aid work and the diplomatic effort and presence will extend well beyond that, and the Afghan compact itself goes until 2011."
Sounds pretty clear. The military mission is almost over.
But within hours, a government spokesman said MacKay hadn't meant to say anything, certainly not that NATO had been told that we intended to end the mission as scheduled. He was just trying to sound like he was saying something.
Which left Canadians in the dark about what the government believes should happen.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a little clearer this week. He says the future of the mission is up to Parliament.
But he added that the Conservatives won't allow a debate or vote on the mission until he's convinced that the Commons will extend the war commitment, Harper says.
Which means an indefinite period of political jockeying.
That's unfair. Canadians deserve a full debate now. NATO deserves to know whether our troops will continue fighting after 2009, so it can plan.
And our troops deserve to know what their futures hold.
The Conservatives could argue that they need more time to persuade Canadians of the progress being made.
But they have had 19 months to make the case for the mission. It's now time for a debate and a decision.
Reaching a decision will be difficult, because the correct course is not obvious.
There are reasons for Canada to be at war in Afghanistan - to support the government, prevent terrorists from using the country as a safe haven and improve the lives of citizens.
But there are also reasons to question the effectiveness of the mission, the chance of success and the high cost in Canadian lives.
Recent months have been discouraging.
Canadians are fighting to regain control of areas they secured earlier this year, which the Afghan police and army were unable to hold. They are battling an insurgent campaign that poses enormous tactical challenges. The enemy can avoid confrontation, harass Canadians with IEDs and wait for the chance to reclaim the territory once the NATO forces have moved on. At the same time, the rising civilian death toll is reducing support for the NATO campaign.
Independent reports suggest Canadian aid - at least in terms of some of the major projects touted by the government - has failed to translate into change on the ground.
And the Afghan government and police remain corrupt and inefficient.
Canadians have weighed the evidence and decided our troops have done enough. A national Decima Research poll this summer found two out of three Canadians want the troops out of the fighting when this commitment ends. About 75 per cent of those surveyed did not believe our effort would produce real change in Afghanistan.
It's time for the Harper government to make its best case for a continued mission, and then listen to Canadians.
Footnote: The issue could come to a head when Parliament resumes sitting in October. Dion has said the Liberals would introduce a motion calling on the government to inform NATO that the mission would not be extended. Harper could choose to consider the vote a confidence motion, which would mean an election if the government is defeated.

A dumb and sleazy controversy on veiled voting

I can't remember a weirder, dumber and potentially more sinister political controversy than the great debate over veiled voting.
To read the papers, you would have thought Canadian democracy was making a desperate last stand. All the way over in Australia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was outraged that Elections Canada said women who chose to wear a veil wouldn't have to show their faces before voting.
Imagine. Women in burkas, voting, in Canada.
Harper sounded angry. He "profoundly disapproved" of the decision. Chief Electoral Officer Mark Mayrand was subverting the will of Parliament. Conservative MPs leaped to the attack.
And so did Liberal leader Stephane Dion and NDP leader Jack Layton, in less overwrought fashion. Both said women should have to show their faces if they want to vote.
Except it's utter baloney. Unless the leaders pay no attention to what's going on in Parliament, they know that the Commons passed amendments to the Elections Act earlier this year.
They know that the legislation does not require voters to show photo identification at the polls.
And if voters don't have to show ID, what's the point of demanding to see their faces? Is it so election workers can see if there is dishonesty in their eyes? Or is it just unCanadian to wear a veil, and grounds for barring someone from voting?
Here's what the Election Act says, after the changes the Harper government introduced and the Commons and Senate passed this year.
Voters can establish their identity in two ways. They can show "one piece of identification issued by a Canadian government, whether federal, provincial or local, or an agency of that government, that contains a photograph of the elector and his or her name and address."
Those people would logically have to show their faces, so election workers can be sure that they match the photo.
But Parliament also decided voters could show "two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer each of which establish the elector's name and at least one of which establishes the elector's address."
There's no point in demanding that women who aren't required to show photo ID lift their veils.
You can understand the public getting wound up. The politicians made it sound like Mayrand had gone rogue, creating special rules just for the most extreme - or devout - Muslim women.
But Layton, Dion and Harper, they know better. They know the law allows people to vote without providing photo ID. They know that about 80,000 people voted by mail in the last election, without showing their faces.
So, why are they pretending to be so outraged, when they made the rules?
Maybe they did a bad job, and photo ID should be mandatory to prevent voting fraud. But that's not the law the Conservatives introduced and Parliament passed. (And really, having a bunch of burka-clad women voting under fake names doesn't seem like an efficient way to rig an election.)
It's tough not to smell particularly stinky political opportunism. There are three by-elections in Quebec on Monday. They're being held as the provincial government holds hearings on "reasonable accommodations" for minorities - that is to say, Muslims. A little tough talk might win a few votes.
Even if it is based on a completely bogus issue.
There is a real issue here. Canadian society has accepted the equality of women, sometimes grudgingly.
The burka, or hijab, covering women from head to toe, undermines equality. Their husbands aren't bundled up; just the women. Their work options are limited, lives proscribed. Is it a choice - like wearing a nun's traditional habit - or coerced? That's a big difference, worth discussing. What accommodation is reasonable, for employers, schools and others. When should we care about someone else's choice of dress?
But that's not what the current controversy is about. Instead, the politicians are beating up Elections Canada and a long-time government worker for following their directions.
Unless they're wildly incompetent, they know that's true. And that's sordid.
Footnote: So, what if a burke-clad voter shows up at the polls in B.C. when we vote again in 2009? No worries. The province doesn't require photo ID, so Elections BC says it has no need to see voters' faces.

Suicide, mental illness and our neglect

All across B.C., parents sent their children off to school in the last few days, hoping things would go well, worrying about what might go wrong.
Worrying about the wrong things, mostly.
We drive our kids to school, because we fear bad people might hurt them. We support groups like MADD, figuring drunk drivers are a threat.
And of course we worry about drugs and our children.
But suicide, that's not much on our mind. For some reason, we think it's more likely that strangers will kill our children than that will choose to end their own lives.
We're wrong.
In B.C., your child is 13 times more likely to kill himself than be killed by someone else. He's more than three times as likely commit suicide as to die in an alcohol-related car crash.
And while about 250 people will die of illegal drug overdoses this year, about 400 will kill themselves.
More of those little kids starting kindergarten - or older kids starting university - will die of despair than addiction, car crashes or homicide.
But who talks with their children about mental illness and depression?
It's World Suicide Prevention Day today. That's good. But it's still easier to get people to buy a ribbon showing they disapprove of drunk driving than it is to make suicide an issue.
We just don't like to think about suicide, or mental illness; it's still shameful. Since it's shameful, it's easy to decide the people who are ill don't really deserve our help.
And when the choice is whether to replace some 40-year-old's hip or help someone who suffers from schizophrenia, mental illness usually loses. On some level, a lot of us just think those people should try harder.
Maybe that's changing. The federal government has just created the Canadian Mental Health Commission. "It costs our economy billions and our society untold grief," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in announcing the commission.
I'm not so sure. The provincial Liberals rightly attacked the former NDP government for a mental-health plan that was a sham, lots of words but no funding.
But today, there is no funding commitment for mental-health services. The hard-pressed health authorities decide on spending, not the province. And, often, crowded ERs or surgical backlogs are bigger priorities than help for people struggling with depression.
The Health Ministry's performance plan has only one measurement dealing with mental illness - the percentage of people hospitalized who get some help in the month after they're released. It's a pretty sketchy way to measure performance in a fundamental health area.
I'm sure Health Minister George Abbott's staff will bang out a letter for him to sign about spending great new initiatives once this column runs.
But looking around Victoria, it sure doesn't seem like the mentally ill are getting more help today than they were a few years ago. There are a lot more of them on the streets.
It's not just a government problem. We're mostly alarmed by mental illness. The people are often strange. We wonder why they don't just buck up. (Although we don't think cancer patients should try a little harder to cure themselves.)
Here in Victoria, a drop-in centre that's a lifeline for people with mental illness - a place where they're accepted, have friends, a life - is closing. If it was a seniors' centre, or provided the same break for disabled kids, the media and public would be all over the issue. Not for the mentally ill.
Or look at suicides. Every 10 days in Victoria someone will kill himself. But you won't read about it, or see a report on TV. There are reasons for the media hesitancy; some studies suggest a risk of increased suicides if they are reported.
But I'd argue the media just reflect our reluctance to deal with what is, generally, just another effect of mental illness.
And with some authority. My brother killed himself. And I am sure my response, my family's response, was much different than if cancer or a car crash had killed him.
Really, it starts with us. It starts with recognizing that mental illness is fundamentally just another medical condition. And that people suffering from it deserve care and support just as much as any other people battling illness.

Nuclear power debate about to heat up

Nuclear power debate about to heat up
The big push to mine Alberta's tarsands has put nuclear power back on the political agenda in B.C.
There's not likely to be any change in the provincial government's no-nukes stance. Politically, any B.C. party that advocated nuclear power would get stomped. Pragmatically, the province has a lot of other options, from the Site C dam to wind power.
But a proposed nuclear-power plant in northwest Alberta, about 140 kms from the B.C. border, is likely to spark a new debate on the safety of the atomic energy
After all, if the government maintains the position that nuclear power is unsuitable - and too risky - for B.C., how can it quietly accept a plant not all that far away from Fort St. John and Dawson Creek?
Energy Minister Richard Neufeld inadvertently highlighted the problem, reacting to the Alberta proposal with a response that probably wasn't in the talking points provided by staff. Not my issue, Neufeld said. B.C. has no authority over development in Alberta.
Anyway, he went on, the project isn't that close to B.C.. "It's well over 100 kilometres from the border and the wind generally blows from the west," he said.
That's not exactly reassuring. The idea that something might go wrong, but it's OK because the wind would probably carry any radioactive clouds toward Saskatchewan falls short of seeming like a foolproof safety plan.
The Alberta project, with a $6-billion price tag, is still far from a sure thing. (The project would supply energy to allow extraction of oil from the tarsands, as well as other uses.)
But the scheme is likely to start a useful debate on nuclear power, and energy supplies generally. And the Alberta project will likely force the B.C. Liberals to be clearer about their reasons for banning nuclear energy.
If the reasons include safety concerns, then some people in the province's northeast will be asking why the government isn't taking a stronger role in questioning the Alberta plan. NDP leader Carole James has already said B.C. should oppose the plant.
This should be an interesting debate. Nuclear power has some drawbacks. If something does go wrong, the consequences can be bad. Opponents point to Chernobyl, where the 1986 explosion released radioactive fallout over a wide area. The disaster killed 56 people and is expected to cause 4,000 additional cancer deaths.
Chernobyl was a product of the crumbling Soviet state - poorly designed, badly built and negligently managed. But widespread use of nuclear power would risk similar incidents in other failing countries.
Still, there hasn't been a single fatality in nuclear power plants since then, despite some 430 plants around the world. A lot of people have died mining coal and producing oil and gas for thermal plants in the same period.
An immediate nuclear problem is what to do with the 20 to 30 tonnes of radioactive waste each power plant produces in a year. The material remains dangerous for thousands of years, a dangerous legacy.
While nuclear power has some big drawbacks, so do the alternatives, especially given the new focus on global warming. Coal pollutes and produces large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Oil and gas are cleaner, but expensive, and also major sources of carbon dioxide. Getting the oil, gas or coalbed methane from the ground also creates problems.
There's great potential in wind and tidal and small hydro. Conservation and greater efficiency are important.
But globally, the demand for power is projected to increase by 2.4 per cent per year. That means a doubling of existing electrical production by 2037. Without nuclear power, an awful lot of coal, gas and oil are going to be burned to keep the lights on.
The issue isn't just heating up in B.C. The U.S. has asked Canada to join a new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to encourage nuclear development and manage the risks. The Harper government has said if it will sign on; the next meeting is less than two weeks away.
Expect lots of attention on the nuclear industry in the next year.
Footnote: The other issue waiting to hit the headlines is uranium mining in B.C. The government has banned nuclear power, but is fine with uranium mining. Neufeld says there aren't likely any worthwhile deposits, but several companies have staked claims and are raising money for exploration and development.

MLAs figure they need four times as much for housing as the disabled

Everyone knows about MLAs’ big raises and their extraordinary pension plan improvements.
But only Times Colonist columnist Les Leyne, as far as I know, has taken a look at some of the other big benefit increases in the works.
One leaps out. The three-person panel that reviewed politicians’ pay— the panellists were paid $50,000 each for three months of part-time work — also looked at the extra money MLAs get for living expenses when they have to be in Victoria.
Too low, said the panel. MLAs can now claim $150 for days they’re in Victoria on business (if they’re from here, they get $51.50 for food and incidentals). Health Minister George Abbott, who needs to spend a lot of time here or in Vancouver, claimed $19,000 last year.
The current allowance isn’t rich, but it covers a hotel room at government rates and reasonable meal expenses. Anyone who spent a lot of time in Victoria would be able to rent an apartment with that much money.
But the panel said that was too mingy. It recommended, without any explanation, that all MLAs get paid $61 a day for 75 sitting days. If the legislature goes longer, they would get more. If it sat for fewer days, they wouldn’t pay anything back. (The legislature sat for 46 days in 2006.)
And the panel recommended a housing allowance of up to $19,000 a year for MLAs who live outside the capital region and decide to rent an apartment or buy a second home.
That’s $1,583 a month for housing. Not a principal residence, but a place one person — maybe two — would use some of the time.
It’s a big jump. And I can’t help but think about the contrast between what MLAs believe they need to find a place to live and what they think the most vulnerable people in the province need.
A disabled individual — imagine someone with an illness or injury or developmental disability that makes it impossible to work, and no savings or other income — gets $375 for shelter. A couple gets $570.
About 60,000 disabled British Columbians try to live at that level.
You can have an interesting philosophical debate about what the rate should be. It doesn’t seem fair, for example, for people on income assistance to end up able to spend more on accommodation than some of the lower-income taxpayers who help support them.
But the current levels are indefensible. There is no accommodation available for $375 in much of the province. People go homeless or stay with relatives or use the already meagre allowance for food and other basics.
In Esquimalt, four low-rent buildings have just been condemned and all the tenants evicted. Some suites had bare electrical wires, leaky plumbing and roofs. The living conditions were chaotic, with reports of drunkenness and crime.
Rents in the buildings had started at $480 a month. A person on disability benefits couldn’t have afforded even a place in a building that was about to be condemned.
There’s no reason to expect MLAs to live in the same way as those on income assistance. And this not a criticism of MLAs or their dedication to the work. As a group they are extremely diligent and make personal and financial sacrifices with the goal of making their communities and the province better places.
But the gap between the $375 a month they think a disabled person needs for rent and the $1,580 they consider necessary for themselves is huge. It’s hard to see how MLAs can justify leaving others in such hopeless housing circumstances, while improving their own lot so dramatically.
The deal isn’t done yet. The commission’s report proposed MLAs provide receipts to get the housing money. The legislative committee working on the changes is also looking at making the payment a straight $1,000 a month, with no receipts needed.
Either way, the politicians will be treating themselves a lot better than they’re willing to treat the most vulnerable British Columbians.
It caps a sordid period for B.C. politicians. Raises ranging from 30 per cent for MLAs to 50 per cent for the premier; an extraordinary pension plan improvement, and likely soon, a giant jump in living expenses.
Footnote: The changes are being discussed by the legislative assembly management committee, the most secretive of MLAs’ committees. It approves the $50-million budget for the assembly, but doesn’t publish any reports or minutes or plans. Try to find information on the committee on the government website. Current members are Liberals Bill Barisoff, Mike de Jong, John Yap and Randy Hawes and New Democrats Mike Farnworth and Jenny Kwan.

YouTube leaves police facing tough questions

Two years ago, I wouldn't have been writing a column suggesting police posing as anarchists tried to provoke trouble at the North American summit in Montebello.
YouTube.com hadn't made its official debut two years ago. There was no way for someone like Nanaimo filmmaker Paul Manley to share his work with the world.
And without the evidence, most of us would have likely dismissed claims by a union leader that police, dressed us as protestors, were trying to encourage confrontation - and perhaps justify police action against demonstrators.
But YouTube exists. Manley went to the Quebec summit where Stephen Harper, George Bush and Mexican president Felipe Calderon met. He shot video of three aggressive, masked men - pretending to be protestors - clashing with other peaceful demonstrators. One is carrying a big rock. They're belligerent when told to clear off, that it was a peaceful demonstration. One shoves a demonstrator; they won't take off their masks. Then they push through the police lines, and appear to be arrested.
Weird, eh? Protestors who shove through police lines to get taken into custody?
The people at the protest had guessed the three men were police. Manley's video supported that conclusion. When the men were being "arrested," they were laying on the ground. Their boots were clearly shown, and the soles were distinctive and identical to the boots worn by the police officers kneeling beside them.
The star of the video is Dave Coles of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers' Union. He confronts the three masked aggressors, and keeps on questioning them and insisting its a peaceful desmonstration even when he's pushed around. It's impressive.
Coles went public with the claim that police were acting as agents provocateur. The RCMP wouldn't say if the three masked men caught on video were Mounties. The Quebec provincial police said the three men definitely weren't officers from their force.
But that turned to be untrue. After two days of denials, the Quebec provincial police came clean. The three masked men pretending to be hardcore militants were undercover agents. But they weren't doing anything bad, just monitoring the protest, the force said.
It's justifiable for undercover police officers to mingle with protestors if they have reasonable cause to fear some within the group will commit crimes. Undercover officers could help head off violence.
But there wasn't a whole lot of violence at Montebello.
And in the video, the biggest problems, and source of potential conflict, were the actions of the three police officers, masked and pretending to be bad guys.
The police explanations have sounded a little desperate. One officer was carrying a rock because "extremists" had handed it to him to throw and he didn't want to blow his cover.
The option of dropping it somewhere along the way never crossed his mind.
And the Quebec police never explained why the officers were so confrontational and abusive with Coles and others.
Again, two years ago, this would probably have been the end of it. Union leader says police were trying to provoke conflict at a peaceful demonstration. Police deny it.
But today, people with a good Internet connection can watch Manley's video of the incident and make their own judgments. (It's at www.youtube.com; just search YouTube on Montebello.)
At best, viewers would likely judge the officers incompetent; at worst, they could decide police were trying to provoke a violent conflict.
It should be alarming. When people show up to protest, because they're concerned about some public issue, they should be free to exercise their rights. If they break the law, of course, they should be charged.
But the undercover police threatened protestors and created a real risk of violence.
Public Security Minister Stockwell Day has brushed off calls for an independent investigation of the affair. He seems to have forgotten the roots of his party, and the commitment to protecting the individual from the powers of the state.
Footnote: It is noteworthy that the story exists only because of an individual filmmaker, and YouTube.com, the website that lets people share videos. Manley's video has been viewed 243,000 times on YouTube and referred to in reports by every major news media in Canada. (The CBC nightly news attracts about 600,000 viewers.) The age of Citizen Journalists has arrived.