Toronto the insane

By the time G20 arrestee Gary McCullough has his next court date in December, he will have spent six months locked up without bail for no other reason than the police and courts are unable to admit they should never have arrested him in the first place.

Picked up in a pre-G20 police sweep back in June, police admitted within hours of his media-sensationalized 'terrorist' arrest that he had nothing to do with G20 but the illegal search and seizure of his vehicle turned up a crossbow among his tools, albeit properly secured in a carrying case, so he was charged with "possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose".

Toronto police Const. Hugh Smith :

"It's lawful to have them in your possession … but with close proximity to the summit, we are going to relate it, you know, to the G20 and the safety. So there was more than enough to arrest."

Exactly what "dangerous purpose" do they expect to prove here?

He has threatened no one.

He owns a crossbow because he hates guns and carries it for protection from bears on his rural property.

He was in Toronto to get his car window fixed.

He had all his remaining possessions loaded into his car because someone burnt his rural house down and he is currently rebuilding it.

At his court appearance yesterday, the judge proclaimed the schizophrenic McCullough unfit to stand trial following his months in solitary confinement for his own protection after he was beaten up by other prisoners. The judge has ordered a third psychiatric assessment and remanded him to a psychiatric hospital.

Is this for his own good? No it isn't. At his bail hearing in August, Justice of the Peace Paul Kowarsky displayed an extraordinary lack of understanding of rural life :

"I see no sense that he had to bring all the items for the sole purpose of being in Toronto and running an errand." In denying bail, the justice added: "The inference is he carried all these items for a purpose dangerous to the public."

I fail to see how yet another psychiatric assessment of McCullough will get the just ice system off the hook for persecuting an innocent man for six months.

Combating Terrorism Act passes 2nd reading [bumped]

On the same day the nation was preoccupied with the national Lib/Con competition for votes to preserve/kill the long gun registry, the Libs and Cons combined forces to slip the Combating Terrorism Act through second reading in the House - 220 votes to 84 in a classic Lib/Con vs NDP/Bloc split -just ten minutes before the long gun vote.

The Libs and Cons may disagree on whether it is either useful or an egregious invasion of privacy and civil liberties that Canadians should have to spend a few minutes registering a long gun online, but when it comes to locking Canadians up for 12 months without a warrant or compelling them to appear before a court based on some anonymous tip, they're both just fine with that.

The right to remain silent, the right not to be jailed without charge, the right to know what the charges are against you - pfft!

In reintroducing Bill C-17 for the third time on Monday to reinstate provisions from the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson emphasized a fabulous new feature:

"The key here is that the person required to attend an investigative hearing is treated as a witness, not someone who is accused of a crime."

True, as long as your definition of "witness" includes being arrested if you don't comply and being detained for up to 72 hours if you do.
But what if you are also suspected of being likely to commit a terrorist crime some time in the future. Over to you, Mr. Nicholson :

"a judge can order the person's detention for up to 12 months."

There's a five year sunset clause again and every 12 months the Attorney General and the Public Safety Minister - that would be Nicholson himself and Vic lock-'em-up Toews respectively - must "provide their opinions, supported by reasons, as to whether the operations of these provisions should be extended."

On Monday Liberal critic for Public Safety & National Security Mark Holland made some noises about balancing national security with individual liberty and noted :

"the government has completely ignored most of the key recommendations that came from Justice O'Connor [re Maher Arar], which were supported by Justice Iacobucci and were repeated by the RCMP Public Complaints Commissioner Paul Kennedy"

but then two days later, he voted for it along with the rest of the Libs.

There were hours and hours of speeches in the House this Monday and Tuesday :
Lib Marlene Jennings said right off the bat on Monday that the Libs would be voting for C-17 to proceed to committee.
NDP Joe Comartin noted "there is no crime related to terrorism not already included in the Criminal Code."
Bloc Maria Mourani : Arar. CSIS supports info gained via torture. Why would we give them even more secret powers?
NDP Wayne Marston worried we were slipperysloping into 12thC pre-Magna Carta sensibilities.
Con Colin Carrie was the first to accuse "the coalition" of being "soft on terror".
Bloc Serge Ménard noted that under the War Measures Act "almost all candidates who ran against Mayor Drapeau [in the Montreal elections] were incarcerated. A law which goes so far as to incarcerate political opponents has already been used once in our history," he said.
NDP Don Davies brought up the "preventative arrest of 1,100 Canadians arrested at G20 for simply walking in the street" and asked why a government so against turning people into criminals for refusing to answer the long form census was at the same time happy to lock people up for refusing to answer questions based merely on suspicion?
Lib Derek Lee said Canadians already don't have the legal right to remain silent. (He's wrong about that.)
NDP Bill Siksay noted that security certificates were intended to expedite deportation of non-citizens yet they have been used instead to jail people for up to eight years without a trial. Slippery slope.

As I said - hours and hours of debate.
By Wednesday Libby Davies wondered aloud in the House why there were hundreds of articles in newspapers across the country dealing with the gun registry but no mention of the debate on the Combating Terrorism Act.
Good question, Libby.

Here's another. After much initial huffing about how absolutely vital this bill is in the fight against 'terrorists', and with the Libs onside since June 2009, the Cons have allowed it to languish in limbo for a whole 15 months. Now suddenly it's back on their agenda again as the first government order tabled on the return of the House this week. Why is that?

G20 - The Impersonating a Police Officer Sketch

Paul Jay has posted an excellent two part interview with constitutional/criminal lawyer Clayton Ruby. Ruby is defending British satirist Charlie Veitch, the second person to be charged at G20 under the Public Works Protection Act. You can watch both parts at The Real News Network or at Creekside.

Shorter Ruby: We do have the right to peaceful protest under the Charter; unfortunately we just have no way of enforcing that right.

Veitch faces two charges. One - failure to cough up ID after being escorted by police to within the five meter perimeter of magical police authority. And two - impersonating a police officer. Except that he didn't.

Jay only provides a snippet of the not impersonating a police officer sketch, so here it is transcribed - Veitch's exchange with a rather literal-minded dude from Paragon Security.

CV : "We're from British Military Intelligence, I'm here with the metropolitan police ... so it's all fully authorized at the highest levels ... cause you know sometimes ... have you heard what an Agent Provocateur is?

Security: "I have no ideas."

CV : "What it is, sometimes when there are big demonstrations - I can tell you this because you're security - they use fake protesters to cause trouble, and we're here to be those fake protesters. So it's fully authorized."

Security: "OK, I understand that, do you have a certification?"

CV : "No, we're not press, 'cause we're undercover, and if we carried ID around, we might get searched by protesters."

I really don't see any way for them to avoid reading this little exchange into the record at the trial as evidence. Snerk. Unless, as with the other guy they charged, they just opt for not showing up to the court date at all.

G20 Ten Most Wanted and their control group

At yesterday's presser, the Toronto Police media guy announced their "G20 Most Wanted Individuals" list :

"They are individuals who are not suspects - they are people who are wanted for criminal offences and the only difficulty that the investigative team has is at this point we don't know who they are so we're seeking the assistance of the public to identify them to us ."

He further advised they have "over 14,000 still images of individuals and over 500 videos", which they will be sharing with the Canadian Banking Association to run through their facial recognition software. Keep those citizen CDs and vids coming, he said.

So after ignoring the rioters for an hour and a half on June 26th in favour of taking their pictures, and then rounding up, IDing and photographing over a thousand hapless random citizens the following day, you will now use the banks' software tools to look for a match between the two groups.
Got it.
Well at least we know the point of the Sunday bucket detainments now - it was just their bad luck to be chosen to act as the control group.