Chief Bill Blair And Secrecy

Presiding as he does over a very troubled organization, it is perhaps not surprising that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair prefers a cloak of secrecy to cover how he manages his force. But it is difficult to see whose interests, other than those of the good chief, are served by refusing to share with the public how he deals with his officers when they abuse citizens.

One of the first casualties of this refusal to shed light is surely public trust, a fact attested to by letters to The Star, one of which you can read below:

Re: Cops used ‘torture’ to get confession, top court rules, Dec. 13

Thanks to the Star for reporting on the sickening story of police brutality. Torture is a crime; police are not authorized to use force to obtain “confessions.” Charges are supposed to rely on evidence of criminal activity by the suspects, not by the police.

We pay the police to uphold the laws of our society, which include our civil and human rights. When police impunity is such that police believe that brutalizing people (and telling them to lie) is “part of the job”, it’s (past) time for our governments and courts to start to protect Canadian rights.

They might start by giving the SIU real teeth; police should be forced to respond promptly and honestly to SIU requests for information. There were many police who violated police rules and the rights of Canadians at the G20 several years ago, yet only one or two seem to have been called to account. Every one of the police identified as having broken any rules (such as not wearing proper identification) should have been punished appropriately. The courts should make the police fully accountable for violations of people’s rights. The police violations of Canadian human and civil rights should no longer be tolerated.

Karin Brothers, Toronto

The general public is not the only segment harbouring grave misgivings about those who 'serve and protect.' A hard hitting Star editorial in this morning's edition, entitled Toronto police secrecy undermines public trust, makes clear that the chief's evasions and subterfuge have no place in a democracy:

Undue secrecy when police investigate their own only saps public confidence that justice is done when an officer breaks the law. For that reason, if no other, Toronto’s police board should reveal reports that Chief Bill Blair prefers to keep hidden.

The reports refer to a specific offence allegedly committed by Toronto police: failure to co-operate with Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the outside agency summoned whenever police are involved in a fatality or serious injury, or are accused of sexual assault.

The editorial goes on to observe that while Blair asserts that he has investigated all of the concerns brought forward by the SIU, he insists they remain confidential, only to be shared with the Toronto Police Services Board. Not even the SIU is privy to what he claims to have done. This stands in stark contrast to other police services that make the result of investigations public, excising only the most confidential information.

So who is Blair really protecting here?

There are many reasons I am glad not to be a resident of Toronto; the fact that it has a largely unaccountable police force led by a man who seems contemptuous of the public is among my chief ones.

In This Season Of Getting And Spending

... a timely reminder about the practices of the world's biggest retailer:



This article is also worthy of perusal.

A Lion In Winter

Like a bloated, aging and wounded lion who realizes his hold over his pride is at an end, Conrad Black is lashing out. Still licking his wounds from lacerations received at the hands of the CBC's Carol Off, Black used his column in Saturday's National Post (which as a rule I do not read, but more about that later) both to justify his journalistic ineptitude and to strike back at his growing list of adversaries who include Star editor Michael Cooke, Star columnist Rosie DiManno, The Star itself, and well, just about anyone else who finds fault with him.

With false leonine pride, in his column Black maintains the fiction that it was not journalistic ineptitude but rather the show's format that explains his toothless interview with disgraced Toronto pretend-mayor Rob Ford:

As co-host of the Vision Channel television program Zoomer, I invite people to sit down with me in civilized conversation, which often included unwelcome questions. But I do not conduct an antagonistic debate. This is a format that viewers seem to enjoy, and it was on this basis that guests — including Mayor Ford, last week — have agreed to speak with me.

He goes on to dismiss the controversy over Ford implying that Daniel Dale is a pedophile as a sideshow, and then launches into what can only be described as a screed against The Star and its staff, most notably its most prolific and acerbic writer, Rosie DiManno, whom he describes as a feminoid who is so disconcerted by my wife’s timeless appearance that she refers to the frequent praise of her as a form of “necrophilia.”

Which brings me to how I wound up reading Black's piece. This morning, The Star's own lioness, Rosie Dimanno, still apparently in her prime, extrudes her own claws as she responds to the Black attack.

Here is her opening salvo:

Mrs. Conrad Black is the most gorgeous septuagenarian on the planet.

And, while hardly a kitten with a whip any longer, Barbara Amiel remains quite the dominatrix in print, a polished writer who can stick a stiletto heel into any subject’s jugular. A far better wordsmith than her husband, too. Indeed, Black isn’t even the best writer from among her five spouses.

I mention the Baroness only because hubby has specifically accused me of not appreciating her timeless beauty. I do. And maybe at some future date, Amiel can give me the name of her plastic surgeon.

Lest you think her column is simply a catty attack on Mrs. Black, she soon turns her attention to her real target:

We now know also why disgraced newspaper baron and felon Connie (Con, for short) devotes himself to producing remainder-bin biographical doorstoppers about dead people — because he doesn’t have to interview them. His singular lack of skill in this most basic reportorial function was on grotesque display last week whilst “chatting” — Black doesn’t call these puffball exchanges interviews — with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on his Zoomer show, an excruciatingly embarrassing episode that should be shown to J-students as instructive lesson on how not to do it.

There is much more in her piece which, depending upon the exigencies of time and interests, you may wish to check out.

While there are admittedly much bigger issues that need to be addressed and pursued in the world today, sometimes there is an innate satisfaction to be had when bullies, whether of the physical or verbal kind, are soundly and roundly put in their place. And while many may lament the fact that age eventually diminishes all of us, we do no one any service by using that to excuse the effete roaring of a lion in winter.

It Always Seems Like A Good Idea At The Time

...but who can forget the Borg and the Cylons?

Will Google eventually forget its motto, "Don't be evil"?

Pension Reform

More of the white stuff has fallen, and I can ignore the importunate call of the snow shovel no longer, so I will make this brief with two reading recommendations for your Sunday morning discernment.

In today's Star, Martin Regg Cohn writes convincingly on the need for real pension reform, but he predicts that the provinces' finance ministers, who will be meeting today and tomorrow, will get nothing from federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. The latter will trot out the standard 'now is not the time- the economy is too fragile' line, but with more and more people destined to retire in relative poverty, the time for delay is over.

The fragility-of-the-economy-argument is given short shrift in another Star article by C. Scott Clark, a former Federal Deputy Minister of Finance, and Peter Devries, who was Director of Fiscal Policy when CPP was last reformed in 1998. The writers show how that tired argument has been used repeatedly to try to stop past measures:

The last significant structural changes to the CPP (and Quebec Pension Plan) were made in the late 1990s. At that time, CPP contribution rates were doubled, an independent investment board was established and the program was put on a sustainable basis. The arguments now being used by the government are not unlike those made by anti-reformers in 1997. Opponents argued that doubling the CPP premium rates would have a major negative impact on economic growth and job creation. This did not happen.

They go on to cite how the the economy was deemed too fragile when the government replaced the federal manufacturer's sales tax with the GST in 1991, and when the mid-90s saw the Liberals impose tough fiscal measures to deal with the deficit. In neither case did the economic sky fall in.

I'm convinced that we Canadians are far too passive, giving free reign to a government that makes its lack of responsiveness to the needs of Canadians a virtue. Until that changes, all we can likely expect is more of the same blather and inaction on the part of the Harper cabal.

Police Torturers And Their Enablers

It is heartening to know that the Hamilton police are discharging their duties responsibly, as attested to by a video that went viral this week. However, to believe that all is well in policeland would be but a comforting illusion.

Yesterday, Kev reported on the 'excesses' of some Toronto police whose actions, described by the Court of Appeals' judge as 'torture under the Criminal Code', led to the staying of a conviction against the victim. Incidentally, two of the officers involved in the abuse, Jamie Clark and Donald Belange, received promotions, no doubt rewards for their 'exemplary' work.

Where does responsibility for the rot reside? As in all institutions, it must be placed on the shoulders of the leadership, in this case the office of Chief Bill Blair, who frequently seems more adept as a politicians than he does as Toronto's top cop. And the Toronto Police Services Board, led by Alok Mukherjee, has to be seen as one of the chiefs chief enablers.

A report by former Special Investigations Unit director Ian Scott suggests that Blair virtually ignored over 100 letters Scott sent to him alleging that officers repeatedly violated their legal duty to co-operate with the provincial watchdog. Blair's spokesperson and pet poodle, Mark Pugash, disputes this, asserting: “All of the points he raised were dealt with..."

Where the truth resides is something the public is not allowed to know. As reported in today's Star, the Toronto Police Services Board refuses to make this information public:

Chair Alok Mukherjee said Thursday the board has “considered” publishing the reports, but has not because certain information must be kept confidential under the Police Services Act, such as the names of officers involved in disciplinary matters or classified police procedures.

This stands in contrast with several other police services boards in the province, which release the chief’s reports at public board meetings, with confidential details removed.

Ottawa, for example, publishes its reports online, leaving out only the names of the officers involved. [I]n Durham, reports are only kept secret if their disclosure would threaten public safety or personal privacy.

Meanwhile, the good people of Toronto are expected to remain content with this from Chief Blair:

“In every single case without exception, I have reported to the oversight authority that the statute says I’m supposed to, which is the police services board.”

But the chief said he doesn’t think those reports should be made public.

“That is at the discretion of the board, and there are aspects of those reports which quite frankly deal with issues of personnel, which are not appropriate to be made public.”

We live in a troubling time when, on many levels, the Canadian public is being treated with an indifference that borders on absolute disdain, even contempt. However, despite the best efforts of the Harper cabal to establish a Canada that is more secretive and repressive society, a process that seems to be infecting all levels of governance, we still enjoy basic freedoms as a putative democracy; full disclosure of police misconduct is required and demanded unless the police motto "to protect and serve' is to be seen as little more than a cruel irony.

Canada's Sad Devolution

What was once Canada the cool, the country a 1991 Economist cover story called the "post-modern nation-state", has now devolved into a rightwing hellhole.

So says The Guardian in an article entitled Sadly, Rob Ford epitomises what Canada has become. Using Toronto's Chief Oaf Rob Ford and the hard-right policies of Stephen Harper as exemplars, the writer, Matthew Hays, concludes that our country has lost its way.

While one may not agree with all of the conclusions drawn, it is once again sobering to see ourselves as other see us, thanks to the misbegotten policies and contemptuous behaviour of our democratically-elected 'leaders.'