Tory MP Brad Butt retracts claim he saw voter cards stolen

CBC: February 24, 2014

Conservative MP Brad Butt is stepping back from his assertion earlier this month that he saw voter information cards taken from the garbage and given to a candidate’s supporters to be used by people without identification.

The MP for the Ontario riding of Mississauga-Streetsville sits on the procedure and House affairs committee that is looking at proposed changes to Canada’s election laws. One of the changes would eliminate the voter information cards sent by Elections Canada as an acceptable form of identification.

On Feb. 6, Butt described seeing the voter information cards wrongly used by others to cast ballots.

“On mail delivery day when the voter cards are delivered to community mailboxes in apartment buildings, many of them are discarded in the garbage can or the blue box. I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID,” Butt said in the House.

He repeated the story an hour later in response to a question from New Democrat MP Mike Sullivan as debate continued on C-23, the bill containing the proposed changes.

“I will relate to him something I have actually seen,” Butt said.

“On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. I have seen campaign workers follow, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Why are they doing that? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop.”
‘I misspoke’

On Monday, Butt retracted that statement in the House.

Butt said on Twitter simply that he “misspoke.”

“I misspoke during debate and corrected the record,” he said.

In an email to CBC News, Butt didn’t respond to questions about what led him to believe he had seen the cards stolen.

“I think you saw that I clarified that I did not personally see it. Over the years I have heard stories about voter cards being collected in common mailrooms. That’s it,” Butt said.

It wasn’t just on the floor of the House of Commons that Butt suggested the voter information cards were used fraudulently. He later told a similar story, this time attributing it to his 12 years as president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Apartment Association, representing owners and operators of apartment buildings.

(Read more at CBC)

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By Oriental Review: February 24, 2014

“There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.” -Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

After signing a void agreement on “crisis settlement” on Friday, the situation in Ukraine has rapidly got out of control of its signatories and “witnesses”. No provisions of this document were fulfilled. The legitimate authorities fled (or tried to flee) the country, the governmental buildings in Kiev are taken by the revolutionary mob. The radicals are dictating the new rules to façade opposition “leaders” who desperately try to bridle the Maidan.

What happened to Ukraine on February 21, 2014 is essentially a criminal coup committed by the radical armed anarchists and Ukrainian Nazis who have been enjoying a comprehensive financial, military, diplomatic and even religious support and instigation from the Western power groups for the last two decades. Many of Ukraine’s cities are now falling into the chaos of lootings, unprovoked violence, lynch law and political repressions.

The first signs of upcoming chaos were clearly seen as the Ukrainian authorities wavered at the three-month siege of the centre of Kiev by the radical guerrilla elements from Galicia and local criminal gangs. They watched silently when furious fanatics were burning unarmed riot police Berkut officers alive, lynching them and pulling out their eyes. They did nothing to stop frantic “freedom fighters” from storming regional administrations, humiliating the officials and looting police and military arsenals in the West Ukraine. They were paralyzed when unidentified snipers were cool-bloodily killing militia personnel, protesters and casual passer-bys from the roofs of Kiev’s buildings. They even declared amnesty (twice!) to those guilty of the brutal crimes against policemen and public order. Thus Yanukovych’s regime itself paved the way for a sinister ghost of the war-torn Libya to come to Ukraine.

Is the guerrilla side a self-organized and self-indoctrinated popular movement tired of a corrupt and inefficient state? That is hardly the case.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the international power groups have invested billions of the Federal Reserve notes (aka US$) into Ukrainian “pro-democratic” NGOs and politicians. While preaching “Ukrainian commitment to the European choice and democratic values” in the meantime they clearly saw that there is no short-term historical perspective for making Ukraine a state hostile to Russia, which is evidently the final goal of the globalist Eastern policy. The stakes were placed on the ultranationalist elements in the Western Ukraine and in the Uniate Church, a minority religious Greek-Catholic community of the Eastern rite, created by the Holy See in XVI century in a desperate attempt to weaken close ties of Rzeczpospolita’s Orthodox with Moscow. Since the early 1990s the Uniates enjoyed silent support of the newly-independent central authorities in Kiev. Theit tactic was to aggressively occupy Orthodox cathedrals on the canonic territory of the Moscow Patriarchate. The last thing the Uniate clergy used to preach in the occupied churches for all these years was the Christian call for repentance and peace. Instead they propagated a new crusade against the Orthodox and directly instigated and justified race-motivated prosecutions and even killings, acting exactly like radical jihadist preachers of the militant pseudo-Islamic sects. Suffice to watch a “Sunday sermon” by Mykhailo Arsenych, the clergyman from a local Uniate church in Ivano-Frankovsk region, Ukraine saying: “Today we are really ready for a revolution.The only effective methods of combat are assassination and terror! We want to be sure that no Chinese, Negro, Jew or Muscovite will try to come and grab our land tomorrow!”

The products of such indoctrination were not long in coming. A number of NATO-sponsored training centers for the Ukrainian ultranationalist militants were opened on the territory of the Baltic states immediately after they joined NATO in 2004. The detailed photo report on a Ukrainian group taking a course of subversive activities at a NATO training center in Estonia in 2006 is available here (texts in Russian).

Abundant financial and human resources were directed to bolster the paramilitary units of the radical UNA-UNSO, Svoboda and other ultranationalist organizations in the Ukraine. Since 1990s these thugs were participating in the Chechen and Balkan wars on the side of radical Wahhabi (!) militants and committing war crimes against captured Russian and Serbian soldiers and civilian population. One of the notorious guerilla fighters of the Ukrainian origin in Chechnya, Olexander Muzychko (aka criminal leader Sasha Biliy) today is heading a brigade of “Pravyi Sector”, the radical militant driving force of the ongoing coup d’état in Kiev. According to his “official” biography, in 1994 he was awarded by the then top commander of terroristIchkeria enclave Dzhohar Dudayev with the order “Hero of Nation” for “outstanding military successes against Russian troops”. His “military skills” were quite specific: he used to lure the Russian units operating in remote Chechen locations to guerilla ambushes. Then he personally participated in tortures and beheadings of the captured Russian soldiers. After returning to the Ukraine in 1995, he led a criminal gang in Rovno. Eventually he was prosecuted and sentences for 8 years term for kidnapping for ransom and attempted assassination of a Ukrainian businessman. He entered politics after release from prison in late 2000s.

After the end of Chechen and Balkan wars the British and American private military contractors were routinely recruiting Ukrainian mercenaries for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.The Britam Defense scandal revealed the way and scale of how the Ukrainian personnel of the private military contractors were used in provocative clandestine actions to meet Western political goals in the Middle East. Many of them were sent to Kiev to make the job they are paid for – to target both policemen and protesters on “Euromaidan” from the roofs of surrounding buildings.

The real leaders of the protest have already clearly expressed their radical views to the European press (read e.g. the interview with the Pravyi Sector leader Dmitro Yarosh and several recent Guardian’s publications).

(Read more & find links to sources at Oriental Review)

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By Alan Jones
Vice: January 9, 2014

In 2012, the Conservative government introduced legislation that allowed employers to pay foreign workers 15% less than their Canadian counterparts. These rules applied explicitly to workers who came to Canada as a part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), here to work on a short term basis with no path to permanent residency or citizenship.This legislation was remarkable in that it skipped the usual left-wing arguments for immigration and multiculturalism as a humane form of nation-building and jumped immediately into the right-wing scenario of immigrants arriving in Canada to work for less money than their domestic counterparts. Only in Canada, where it’s commonly believed that immigration is necessary for economic sustainability, could a right-wing government implement an immigration policy that plays directly into the fears of reactionary conservative paranoia.

Even a cursory glance at statistics on the predatory employment policies migrant workers face are alarming: According to a Citizen and Immigration study conducted by the government in 2011, 22 percent of temporary foreign workers were paid less than minimum wage, 25 percent did not receive pay information that showed a record of deductions or hours worked, and 39 percent of workers who worked overtime hours never received overtime pay. Another 32 percent received overtime pay “rarely” or “sometimes.”

Officially, the TFWP is meant to fill holes in Canada’s labour market, providing workers for industries in which Canadians themselves were unwilling to work. In every case, the employer of a foreign worker must provide evidence that there were no Canadian workers available for a given position by requesting a Labour Market Opinion from the government. For a brief time the government actually gave employers a monetary incentive to bypass Canadians and hire cheaply from the international labour market, so it’s hard to believe that any business involved in the program was actually encouraged to try to find Canadian job candidates. In order to further understand this policy and the reasons behind it, I talked to Jeffrey Reitz, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto who has written extensively on Canadian Immigration policy: “There’s been a lot of criticism about it and it’s difficult to understand how the government is not undercutting Canadian workers when the plan is exclusively allowing them to pay less.”

Cut to April 2013: The CBC reports that the Royal Bank of Canada laid off dozens of workers and replaced them with temporary workers from India. In British Columbia, a Chinese mining company advertised for jobs that required the knowledge of Mandarin. When they couldn’t find enough Mandarin speakers in Western Canada (big surprise), they brought in 201 temporary workers from China. “What’s been done has been to use the extensiveness of advertising as the evidence and so the employers put forward that they’ve advertised here and there and all the normal places and haven’t had any applicants,” said Reitz. “But even that, it’s very difficult to know whether they’ve actually done that or what’s the credibility of the information submitted, so it’s a very murky area.”

After a series of controversies, the Conservatives were forced to create new rules for the program which came into effect this year, including a $275 employer fee for a permit, the right for government officials to conduct workplace inspections, and the cancellation of both the two-tier wage system and the accelerated labour market opinion, which allowed for a sped up process to bring in workers. But at this point, Conservative reforms are like poorly applied band-aids on self-inflicted wounds. Since taking office, the TFWP has tripled in size, even growing during the recession. In 2011, nearly half a million temporary foreign workers came to Canada while the Conservative government cut down on family reunification visas and made it harder for refugees to get healthcare.

There are now more temporary workers coming to Canada every year than permanent workers. Many of them come to Canada with little understanding of their rights, leaving them vulnerable to workplace abuse. Even though government officials can now legally inspect workplaces to prevent abuse, the new regulations that went into effect at the beginning this year have also dropped the ban on providing temporary foreign workers to employers with criminal convictions in human trafficking, sexually assaulting an employee, or causing the death of an employee. A shift in policy like that can only raise questions the safety of these low paid workers and whether or not the government is encouraging work environments that are up to Canadian standards.

“When the government puts out the figures on the number of temporary foreign workers being brought into the country, what are the skill levels of those workers?” said Reitz. “In many cases, they’ll emphasize that many of them are high skill. But exactly what the skill breakdown is, is not something for which, as far as I’m aware, reliable statistics are available.” While government officials might emphasize the presence of high skilled workers, many can be found in low skill environments, including the oil, agriculture, and construction industries. The CBC even interviewed a McDonald’s franchise owner in Fernie, BC who used the program to staff his fast food restaurant.

This is the dark side of Canadian immigration policy. Workers from the developing world are brought to Canada to work for low wages on a temporary basis while immigrants that could set up roots in this country are discouraged. With the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the Conservative government is facilitating the worst practises of economic globalization. We’re used to the idea of outsourcing work to another country, but the Conservatives have allowed international outsourcing to occur within our own borders, forcing Canadian workers to compete with an international labour pool that has a far lower standard of living, causing “downward pressure” on wages and discouraging employers from providing training or incentives to hire.

(read the full article at Vice)

Source: http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-canadian-government-is-using-temporary-foreign-workers-to-keep-wages-low

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Exposed: Boston Hospital Takes Custody Of MULTIPLE Children Against Parents’ Will

By Kristin Tate
BenSwann.com

It has been over a year since 15-year-old Justina Pelletier was taken custody by the Boston’s Children’s Hospital. Her parents, Lou and Linda Pelletier, are still fighting to get their daughter back.

Years ago doctors diagnosed Justina with mitochondrial disease, which causes loss of muscle control. Despite this diagnosis, Justina was able to live a happy and relatively normal life with her family in Connecticut. She was very active and enjoyed various sports such as ice skating.

When Justina got the flu last February, she was taken to Boston Children’s Hospital. Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital claimed that she has somatoform disorder, not mitochondrial disease. Somatoform disorder is a mental disorder — not a physical one, like mitochondrial disease.

After this diagnosis was made, the hospital ordered that Justina be taken off all of her mitochondrial and pain medication. Lou and Linda did not think this was the best plan of action and wanted to bring their daughter home. Officials would not allow that. The parents were subsequently escorted out of the hospital by security personnel. Only four days later, they found out they had lost custody of their daughter due to “both parents’ resistance towards recommended treatment plans” and “overmedicalizing” the girl. They are heartbroken and furious.

Justina’s case has the attention of many citizens around the nation, but it turns out there are other children in similar situations.

According to the Boston Globe, in the last 18 months Boston Children’s hospital took custody of children or seriously threatened to do so at least five times. The Globe reported, “It happens often enough that the pediatrician who until recently ran the child protection teams at both Children’s and Massachusetts General Hospital said she and others in her field have a name for this aggressive legal-medical maneuver. They call it a ‘parent-ectomy.’”

The Boston Globe reported that in most cases where hospitals take custody of a child, parents reject the suggested medical treatment. This typically occurs when doctors diagnose the child with a psychiatric disease, but the parents think the condition is a physical one.
Pediatrician Carole Jenny said, “If the parent won’t work with you, and you really think the child is suffering, you’ve got to act.”

Boston Childen’s Hospital took custody of one 5-year-old around the same time that Justina was admitted. Just like Lou and Linda, the girl’s parents were also escorted out of the facility by security. The 5-year-old’s first night in the hospital was the first time she had ever spent a night without a family member.

In another case, the hospital tried to take custody of Jessica Hilliard’s son Gabriel, who is being treated for mitochondrial disease. Hilliard said, “The fact that Children’s has so much power that they can get us in trouble with a totally different hospital across the city is appalling.”

Boston Children’s Hospital and its representatives refuse to comment on any specific cases, but maintain that decisions are made in the child’s best interest in every case.

But who really knows what is in the child’s “best interest?” Critics of the hospitals’ actions argue that such decisions should be left up to parents.

Those who favor parents’ rights see taking custody as an absurd action where the hospital acts completely out-of-line. Such situations become even more controversial when the parents’ views are backed by other pediatricians.

(read the full report at Ben Swann)

Source: http://benswann.com/exposed-boston-childrens-hospital-takes-custody-of-multiple-children-against-parents-will/

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Ontario man can’t get his $10K in suspected drug money back, judge rules

By Allison Jones
The Canadian Press: February 17, 2014

A man from North Bay, Ont., cannot reclaim $10,000 in suspected drug money that police seized after they found it in several wads stuffed in his pockets, a judge has ruled.

Jason Paquette at various times told police the source of the money was none of their business, that it was to buy a car and that it was his savings, and explained he didn’t keep it in the bank because he didn’t want any of it taken for child support, the Ontario Superior Court judge wrote in his ruling.

“I am not persuaded by Paquette’s explanation as to why he kept the money on his person,” Judge M. Gregory Ellies wrote.

“There are many safer places to keep $10,000 in cash other than in your pants.”

A police officer spotted Paquette and his girlfriend in a heated argument in downtown North Bay close to midnight on Sept. 10, 2012. When the officer approached and asked if everything was all right, Paquette swore, took his dog’s leash off and swung it over his head, saying “Come get some,” according to Ellies’ decision earlier this month.

Paquette was arrested and later charged with public intoxication. When he was searched police found $10,000 in five bundles held together with elastic bands, the judge wrote.

The police seized the money and the Crown went to court for a forfeiture order, arguing it was either the proceeds of unlawful activity, an instrument of unlawful activity, or both.

There was no direct evidence that the money came from a drug transaction or was going to be used for one.

But the judge wrote that he was satisfied from the Crown’s circumstantial evidence — including Paquette’s two previous drug possession convictions and his failure to “adequately explain the source and purpose of the funds” — that the money was either to be used in a crime or was the proceeds of a crime.

The judge said he couldn’t accept Paquette’s evidence that the $10,000 cash was his savings. His tax returns showed that in the previous four years he earned between $10,000 and $26,000.

“It is unusual, if not highly unusual, for someone to be carrying $10,000 in cash in his pant pockets in downtown North Bay late at night,” Ellies wrote.

“The presence of such a significant amount of money, found late at night on Paquette’s person after he had been in a bar in downtown North Bay, bundled the way it was, is strong circumstantial evidence from which an inference can be made that the money in question is proceeds of drug trafficking, an instrument of drug trafficking, or both.”

Some lawyers have raised concerns about the laws, including that no criminal charge or conviction is needed for a government forfeiture.

Lawyers for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association were in court Monday in that province intervening in just such a case.

RCMP found marijuana plants in David Lloydsmith’s home in 2007 and seized them. He was arrested but never charged and nearly four years after the search, the government brought a forfeiture application on his home, the BCCLA says.

Lloydsmith argued that his Charter right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure was violated and a trial judge agreed that issue should be dealt with first, before a full trial on the forfeiture, but the director of civil forfeiture has appealed.

The BCCLA intervened in the appeal to argue that the issue should be considered at the outset of the case. If it is not addressed until the end, the government would be “well-positioned to leverage settlements from defendants so that stage is never reached,” the organization wrote to the court.

“This will not be an acceptable result for the reputation of the administration of justice — civil forfeitures and forfeiture settlements must not become a consolation prize for criminal investigations that are failed or aborted because they are marred by serious Charter infringements,” the BCCLA argues.

These cases can be an “end run” around the criminal process, said BCCLA counsel Raji Mangat.

(read the full article at The Vancouver Sun)

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ontario+cant+suspected+drug+money+back+judge+rules/9517166/story.html

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