Number 156 – July/August, 2003
More On The “Coderre Card”
You remember Denis Coderre‘s loathsome mandatory national ID card? The one our Immigration Minister would like to stuff down 30-million throats as a punishment for his departmental failures? Well, MPs who took a two-week European trip to investigate hi-tech national ID cards were surprised to discover none of the countries they visited used them. Canadian Alliance MP Diane Ablonczy, a member of the Commons immigration committee who went on the trip, said MPs were led to believe by Immigration Minister Denis Coderre that some of the European countries they visited included biometric features — such as fingerprints and iris scan facial recognition technology — on their ID cards. Instead, Ablonczy said, what they saw was a variety of different, low-tech versions of national ID cards, which are fairly common in Europe. … [Coderre’s] spokesman, Mark Dunn, said yesterday the committee should have done its homework before leaving Ottawa. ‘The minister is not the tour director for the standing committee. He doesn’t decide the agenda of where they go,’ Dunn said. (Toronto Sun, July 17, 2003) Golly, then no one is actually responsible for squandering all those taxpayer dollars. What a relief! It’s sad but many Canadians have been weaned of any attachment to personal rights (except for the right of Barry to bugger Billy on a long term basis and call it ‘marriage’). If we believe the Government, a rising number of Canadians, about 70 per cent back the intrusive identity card. The level of support is somewhat suspect, however, as the pollster is the Liberal Party’s own in-house crew Polara. Support for mandatory biometirc cards for all Canadians was highest among Quebec residents (78%) and lowest in B.C. (34%). Former federal Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski called the card ‘a hare-brained scheme,’ saying it would likely cost taxpayers up to $5-billion and lead to a police state. (National Post, August 11, 2003)
Replacement Then — Toronto
ORIGIN 1971___ 1971 % 1996 __ 1996 %
British/French 587, 290 60% 1,140,984 27.0
Dutch 44,500 1.7 28,224 0.7
German116,6104.454,5761.3
Scandinavian 18,310 0.7 7,128 0.2
Hungarian 23,345 0.9 20,412 0.5
Polish 51,210 1.9 79,776 1.9
Ukrainian 60,705 2.3 38,628 0.9
Serb, Croat nil – 67,212 1.6
Greek 51,470 2.0 62,712 1.5
Italian 271,775 10.3 312,012 7.4
Portuguese 43,640 1.7 127,620 . 0
Spanish 6,495 0.2 26,352 0.6
Jewish 109,865 4.2 98,388 2.3
Other European 118,780 4.5 69,696 1.6
West Asian/Arab nil – 81,504 1.9
South Asian 14,545 0.6 280,332 6.6
Chinese 26,355 1.0 321,732 7.6
Filipino nil – 87,840 2.1
Vietnamese nil – 35,460 0.8
Other East/SE Asia nil – 50,112 1.2
African [see 68,256 1.6
Caribbean below] 168, 948 4.0
Combined 27,965 1.1 856,980 5.6
black pop
Replacement Now
If the whole numbers are lost in the fog of overall population growth, the percentages show a genocidal Via Dolorosa. Over the course of a bare generation, the representative share of virtually every European group has been more than halved, while ethnic groups (barely extent in 1971) have parlayed Third World poverty and population squeeze into demographic dominion of Toronto. But the city can still learn a thing or two about population replacement from Richmond BC: at 59%, the community has the highest proportion of non-Whites in the country (all figures, StatsCan’s 2001 sub-provincial census data). Toronto’s suburb of Markham runs a close second with minorities making up a 55.5% majority, Vancouver clocks in at 49%, Burnaby 48.6%, the Greater Vancouver Area 43.5%, and finally Toronto proper, boasting a paltry 42.8% population of visibles (whether it’s incompetent accounting, underreporting or a high incidence of illegals, the Toronto figure fluctuates wildly, with some estimates running to 60%). One thing is sure, the stopcock has been wrenched open, and there it stays. Richmond’s population metastasized to 163,395, but fully 48,705 of these — or 29.8% — arrived in one great whooshing inrush between 1991 and 2001. It’s the same story wherever prime land is beautified with condos and fast-food franchises: 28.3% of residents in the Greater Vancouver Area arrived in that same decade, as did 24.3% of Burnaby residents, 22.2% of Markham Ontario residents, and 21% of Toronto residents. But Ottawa is insatiable. Choking back guilty sobs, a July 29 National Post headline gulps: Toronto losing crown as immigration capital. Hyperventilating aside, the city retains its title as continental patsy — but only just: For the fourth consecutive year … Toronto was the prime destination for immigrants to North America. … Close to 111,500 new immigrants went to Toronto in 2002, down from 125,000 in 2001. … [Compare] the number of new, legal immigrants to Los Angeles … 108,600 in 2002 from 99,000 in 2001. It doesn’t take all that many physicists-compelled-to-drive-cab to do the math;
the impact of about 110,000 new arrivals per year will be felt in a city of 2.5-million (Toronto) in ways unimaginable to a megalopolis of 9.9-million (Los Angeles).And then, as if to hermetically insulate immigration rhetoric from the chill draughts of common sense, several pages later that same edition of the National Post notes: Damage as a result of suburban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area will cost up to $70-billion, or $14,000 per person, over the next 25 years. If a pro-immigration argument exists to resolve the twin propositions — endless immigration good, endless sprawl bad — readers were not entrusted with it.
Replacement Forever
The truth is that mass immigration is anathema to sustainability and cannibalizes the social contract. A new Sierra Club report, Sprawl Hurts Us All!, makes no mention of annual settlement of a quarter-million immigrants as a possible factor in this unfolding disaster. Nor does it spell out just how wrongheaded is Ottawa’s solution to the problem — encouraging immigrants to settle in rural and suburban Canada — precisely the sort of settlement viewed as most costly and destructive. Ontario is blessed with 21,565 km2 of class 1 farmland, the best soil for agriculture, more than half the total for the entire country (Statistics Canada, 1996 Agricultural Census). Since 1981, 4,700 km2 (1 km every day!) of prime agricultural land in Ontario has been permanently lost to development. … More than 19% of Ontario’s best farmland has already been lost to strip malls and pavement (www.greenontario.org). In the area from Niagara Falls to Oshawa known as the Golden Horseshoe, an additional 1,070 km2 (90% of which is class one farmland) will be committed to urban development by the year 2031. This area of land is nearly twice the size of the existing city of Toronto (634 km2). … In the GTA [Greater Toronto Area], agriculture represents 3% of the economy. The value of the GTA farming industry is larger than the value of the farming industry in each of the Maritime Provinces. … If land use trends continue, Ontario’s ability to produce food will be diminished and more of our food will be transported from distant agricultural areas. … We have been led to believe that all growth is good since growth increases the tax base, thereby leading to a strong local economy. The truth is that any increased tax revenue is overwhelmed by the costs of delivering new services, the loss of farmland, and increased commuting distances. Ultimately, taxpayers finance the high cost of suburban sprawl. If low-density sprawl development continues in the GTA, $55 billion will be needed for capital investment over the next quarter-century to build new roads, sewer and water networks, as well as another $14 billion in operating expenditures. This translates into a whopping $69 billion total or $2.75 billion per year … to serve Los Angeles-style growth over the next 25 years. In the next 30 years, residents of Greater Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara could lose to suburban sprawl an area of farm and forestland nearly twice the size of the existing city of Toronto. … In the GTA during the 1960s, the average amount of developed land per person was a modest 0.019 hectares. By 2001 that amount has tripled to 0.058 hectares per person. If sprawl development continues as it has over the last decade, a total of 120,800 hectares of agricultural land would have to be destroyed by 50-80 years from now to accommodate a megalopolis running nonstop from the shores of Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe. … According to the Toronto Dominion Bank and others, suburban sprawl development draws employment and population away from the urban core, triggering falling property values, declining services, and rising property taxes. … Studies have shown that flooding can occur when 25% of a watershed is impaired, [paved over] and a stream ecosystem will undergo serious stress when changes in the watershed exceed 45%. … As the amount of impervious surface area increases, water runoff from precipitation occurs at a much faster rate than it would if it had the chance to soak through the ground and return to the water table. Urban runoff can contain pollutants such as nutrients, pathogens, industrial and automotive chemicals, oils and pesticides. Eventually this chemical soup will flow into rivers and streams, disrupting the rate of water flow through wetlands and streams and altering aquatic habitats. (Sierra Club, Sprawl Hurts Us All!, February 2003) The good news? Unloved Canadians will suffer most. Third Worlders already know how to live with overcrowding, diminished services and poisonous air and water. But, it’s hard to believe in change when even the Ontario Pension Board starts speculating in outlying farmland. … The problem is that suburban land speculation is one of the greatest and most reliable means of wealth creation in the region. (Globe and Mail, July 30, 2003) The Sierra Club prescribes instead, a super-high density urban core, from which peaceable utopian residents will cycle to work and read quietly in carefully managed green spaces.
The Myth Of Deportation
The UNHCR website makes the strident, if increasingly familiar, claim that Third World nations accept far more refugees than do we of the West. What the UNHCR knows but does not say, is that countries like Tanzania and Pakistan do diddly for refugees as they flood over land borders. What meagre aid these refugees enjoy is universally funded by Western donors. However, it is within Western nations themselves that you find free-for-the-asking welfare, housing, education, medical care, bridge-work, language training and ethnically sensitive peer-counselling. And once you hit the gravy train, it is almost impossible to remove you. In 1999, Canada’s official refugee acceptance rate was less than 50% (compare Germany at 8.6% and the UK at 8.7%) but veterans of the IRB argue that taking appeals, court challenges and the simple expedient of going underground into account, the true picture of our acceptance rate is nearer 100%.
A singularly disheartening piece of research out of Oxford University examines removals in three of the more generous liberal democracies — Germany, the UK and Canada — although only Canada lumbers out with one hand tied behind its back by the endlessly malign Singh decision. Refugees gain access to liberal states in two ways: first, through organized resettlement programmes, in which case their status as refugees will have been determined in advance; or, second, by arriving on the territory of a state as tourists, students, visitors or undocumented migrants and then claiming asylum. In the latter case, states have no duty under international law to provide asylum to refugees. They are only bound by non-refoulement, the requirement not to turn back refugees to a state where they would be persecuted. [In other words, we’ve been lied to about those international accords that, sorry, tie our hands] Traditionally, however, states have tended to grant refugee status to individuals who satisfy the UN definition [a well-founded fear of persecution etc.] … There is a large gap between rejected asylum applicants and removals. Measured in raw numbers and against governments’ stated aims, deportation is wholly ineffective. … While large numbers of asylum seekers arrive, and few are given refugee status, fewer still are forced to leave the country. Deportation remains a singularly rare occurrence. Indeed, the striking feature of the data is that it shows that deportations have in no way increased in a manner commensurate with overall asylum applications. … Endless hours and millions of dollars are devoted to the task of operating asylum systems. If rejections have little impact on whether or not asylum seekers remain in the country, then there is a serious question about the point of it all. … Practically, deportation is above all expensive. Tracking down individuals who may have gone underground is time consuming and resource-intensive, involving the use of scarce public resources. … Even if an individual is located by the state at some point, without some means of apprehension, deportation orders may have little effect. … Even if an individual is detained, normal carriers will often not take deportees, so additional chartered flights have to be arranged. [This trend has mushroomed as deportees discover that tactics like violently disruptive behaviour will postpone removal for however long it takes to make alternate arrangements — if ever] Special teams of security guards have to be drafted in to pick up and accompany the deportee to the country of origin. When deportees are met at the other end by a country-of-origin team (as Romanian deportees from Germany are), these costs are borne by the deporting state. All these costs come on top of legal expenses paid in exhausted appeals. … The resource intensity of deportation is only one constraint. Another is the need for the agreement and co-operation of the country of origin; certain source countries with large emigration pressure – such as China and Iran – refuse to provide this. When a source country refuses to co-operate, European and North American states are helpless. Germany attempted to end non-cooperation on the part of Vietnam by threatening to cut off foreign aid, and it met a wall of resistance; the UK, Australia, Canada and the US have all had to enter into complex and drawn out negotiations with China to facilitate returns. [More advantages in disruptive behaviour] In the case of the former Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, the state that issued the deportee’s travel documents sometimes no longer exists. [Canada acquired terrorist Ahmed Ressam because we had ceased deportations to Algeria altogether] In other cases (gypsies stand out as an example), certain states such as Romania dispute their claim to national membership. The latter development is exacerbated by the loss or destruction of travel documents by migrants themselves. In the absence of a legal document connecting an individual to a state, deportation is impossible. What’s more, in Germany, not only is the state required to release the individual it wishes to deport; it is also obligated to provide him or her with social support. Whereas in the US asylum seekers and illegal migrants enjoy few if any social rights, even migrants without legal status are often able gain access to Europe’s [and Canada’s] welfare programmes. As a result of these constraints, especially on documentation, the state perversely finds it easiest to deport citizens who entered the country legally. … If someone on a temporary work permit continues in employment after it expires, the state can relatively easily (from a technical point of view) initiate a deportation procedure.
The state, however, often has the least interest in deporting these individuals. By contrast, the majority of illegal migrants who disappear into the anonymity of London, Berlin or Toronto are never found. Even when country-of-origin agreement is reached and the requisite documentation exists, deportation is a politically costly exercise. Although publics across Europe and North America express support for tight immigration controls and less immigration, that support vanishes when the press shows pictures of individuals escorted, perhaps dragged, from their homes to an awaiting airplane. The deaths that occasionally result during these activities serve only to heighten the political sensitivity of governments. When the deportation is not widely covered in the press, churches and members of the NGO [so-called non-governmental organizations are usually funded by the very government whose policies they oppose] community lobby hard against it. Large numbers of airlines, including Germany’s Lufthansa have at times refused to accept returned asylum seekers. If the deportee has children in school, then the latter too is added to the oppositionist chorus. There is a small (but possibly growing) number of vocal NGOs who believe that the very practice of deportation constitutes a violation of human rights. Their attacks on Western states can be loud and strategically significant, and their skill at exploiting popular unease about deportation effective. … In Canada and the UK it is not at all uncommon for the period between application for asylum and the issuance of some form of final removals order to take three years. Again, the longer individuals remain within a country, the less likely they are to leave. …
This suggests that an entire literature on the relationship between migration and sovereignty – holding globalization and increased immigration undermine the state’s capacity to control immigration – has got it backwards. The nation-state has not lost control over entry to its borders; it has rather lost control over movement within and from its borders. … Putting it another way, the restrictiveness of the liberal state’s policy towards asylum seekers can be seen as flowing from the liberalism (intentional or otherwise) of its policy towards foreigners inside the state. … Given the constraints facing it, and given its unpopularity, it is something of a mystery that states bother at all. Indeed, it would seem that either states should take it much more seriously – through mass, efficient deportations – which will be extremely difficult legally, politically and morally – or get out of the game altogether. … By maintaining policies on deportation, the state furthers the myth – and it is nothing more than a myth – that it can actually remove from its territory all criminal non-citizens and/or illegal migrants. No state is willing to collapse the distinction between legal and illegal migrants. This myth, or perhaps this noble lie, serves a three-fold purpose. First, it assuages domestic public opinion, which would not view the state’s incapacity in this area with equanimity. Second, it serves as an (unquantifiable) disincentive for those seeking to migrate into Europe or North America. Third, in cases where a policy of voluntary return is operated –- as it was on a massive scale in Germany in the late 1990s (for Bosnian and Kosovan asylum seekers granted temporary protection) –- it allows the state to apply pressure in favour of return. Holding out the prospect of possible, however remote, deportation allowed Germany to increase the incentives for migrants to return under favourable and (at least nominally) voluntary conditions. (Deportation and the Liberal State: The Forcible Return of Asylum Seekers and Unlawful Migrants in Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom, Matthew J. Gibney,
CRIME WATCH
Remember, Dull, Drab, Machete-Free Canada?
Amazingly, the words hate crime never appears anywhere in these accounts.A woman whose identity has been carefully shielded, became so enraged after the Children’s Aid Society took custody of her four children that, within minutes, she grabbed a machete and chopped off the hands of a neighbour who she believed had called in complaints against her.[The call actually originated at the children’s school; the children had not been in school since last October!]The incident started yesterday after Toronto police helped the CAS take four children into custody…. They were not far from the home when panicked neighbours in the housing compound began shouting for them to return…. Police went to [Madelene] Monast’s house where they found her bleeding with her hands severed.They arrested the children’s mother at the scene…. The victim’s sister had only harsh words last night to describe the neighbour … ‘This woman better get what she deserves,’ she said. (Globe and Mail, June 12, 2003)Publishing her name would be a good start. MadeleneMonast and her family were used to threats that their neighbour would chop them up with a machete, Monast’s son said yesterday.’She’s been telling us for years she’d cut us up’ … Rolland Monast, 23, told reporters.’She kept the machete on her wall.Some people keep swords on their walls but they don’t sharpen them.’Rolland said … his mom’s right hand was completely severed and about three-quarters of her left hand was hacked off as she tried to protect her face…. Because Monast was having nightmares, her children take turns sleeping with her at Toronto Western Hospital…. ‘She still has her sense of humour,’ said Monast’s sister, Dawn Irwin.Irwin said Monast started singing a cat-food jingle as she tried to pick up pieces of muffin off a plate with her mouth.’She started going meow, meow, meow, meow, Irwin said.’It broke my heart.’ (Toronto Sun, July 7, 2003) A police officer shot and killed one [Iranian] man and wounded another after two women reported someone attacked their car with a machete.The women said they were parked on the main street in [the Port Moody] Vancouver suburb early Monday morning when a car pulled up behind them and tried to push their vehicle.’The woman reported a person got out of this vehicle armed with a machete and began to smash their vehicle, breaking a window,’ said Const. Brian Soles.The police spokesman said the attacker then fled but drove by the location again just as a police officer was taking the women’s report.The officer tried to follow the car but it fled at high speed.However, another officer responding to a radio alert spotted the car with three people inside on a dead-end street.’
The suspects got out of their car and confronted the [officer],’ said Soles. ‘What specifically occurred then is not known.What is known is a police shooting ensued…. The initial attack on the two women appeared random, said Soles, and until he attacked the officer, the man was only facing mischief charges. (Canadian Press, July 14, 2003) Back in November 2001, [Thien Nguyen] Luong attacked another tenant with a machete in the west-end apartment building where he lived…. ‘The victim was walking in the hall when he was attacked and hit repeatedly over the head,’ said [Crown attorney Carmel] Penney.He was hit so hard pieces of skull were lodged in the his brain.When he tried to ward off the onslaught, his fingers were chopped off.’It’s been devastating to his life.He’s on seizure medication and his hands are permanently disfigured,’ she said…. ‘The victim said he just started attacking him.After it was over he calmly walked back into his apartment.’ (Toronto Sun, July 8, 2003)Luong was convicted in October, but because the crown is seeking dangerous offender status, has yet to be sentenced.Despite the lengthy delays, Luong recently insisted on a change of counsel.
The Killing Season, Or Let’s Get Jiggy
It’s the usual day in paradise … welcome to Scarborough. Less than abjectly sensitive words uttered by a police officer responding to what must have sounded like a shooting ‘n’ looting call at Toronto’s Scarborough Town Centre Mall. On the opening day of Toronto’s annual black blowout Caribana, the trouble started at a rap music talent contest. [When the inevitable] fight erupted, about 20 young men ran into the mall … causing panic by scattering firecrackers. … Fearing looting, merchants hastily began shutting up shops as more than a dozen police cruisers sped to the mall. … Reports of gunfire were unsubstantiated, but a man was nabbed carrying a hatchet. (Toronto Sun, July 19, 2003) Two days later, two Scarborough neighbours cowered as a man was executed between their houses: found with his hands tied behind his back with a belt. … A [witness, now] in critical condition in hospital … pulled up as this happened or shortly after it occurred. … In the car with the man who was shot was a pregnant woman. … Three men were seen running east away from the house … the first was black … the second man was also black … the third suspect had a light complexion. (Toronto Sun, July 22, 2003) There was another killing two days before Caribana opened: Nigel Hamblett said his brother, Neil Armstrong, 17, was a good kid who loved … hanging out with his buddies, up to three of whom fled shortly after a gunman shot him in the chest early Wednesday morning. The cold-blooded killing is eerily similar to the Canada Day murder of Msemaji Granger, whose friends also deserted him as he lay dying in Exhibition Place following a concert. … Granger, 24, was ambushed by two men who shot him in the back, while hundreds of people leaving the concert were nearby. (Toronto Sun, July 19, 2003) And still Caribana plodded on. On July 29, police from 31 Division were on foot patrol at a housing complex in the heavily black Jane-Finch area, when someone started shooting at them. They returned fire and hit the man in the shoulder. When neighbours crept out of hiding, they became enraged and started to taunt and swear at the police. As the mood turned uglier, police called for back-up. That same night, two teenagers returned to a nightclub and fired a shotgun into a bouncer who’d refused them entry.
The bouncer is expected to live; the arrested cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. But as usual, all hell really broke loose after the August 3rd Caribana parade: Around 3:30 a.m., shots were heard near Yonge and Gerrard Streets. … Three men, all from the Toronto area and in their 20s, were hit by the bullets. … While police and paramedics were trying to help them, 11 more shots were heard. … Some in the crowd of hundreds threw bottles … others taunted police by charging at them and then changing direction at the last second. … [When] police found another shooting victim near Yonge and College … mounted police were called in to disperse the crowd. All four shooting victims were treated [for relatively minor injuries] in hospital. … Another man was shot in the leg near Spadina Avenue and Queen’s Quay around 5:30 a.m. [Yet another man was shot] on Sunday afternoon around 5 p.m. (Globe and Mail, August 5, 2003) On Sunday, Waiying Jimmy Chiu, 17, succumbed to injuries suffered after being beaten with a baseball bat during a street brawl. One suspect had kicked him several times after he was comatose. His assailants were described as black. Guyanese-born Terrance Riaz Ali, 15, who attended the Caribana parade Saturday, was found Monday floating in Lake Ontario. The body of 23-year-old Marvin Dahn (late of Liberia) was found Tuesday at the foot of the stairwell leading into the underground garage of a Lawrence Ave. E. apartment building. [When Dahn was 19], he was charged in March 2000 with attempted murder after a man was shot in the leg and pistol-whipped. He was also charged with possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking after police alleged they found a ‘significant amount’ of crack cocaine when they arrested him at a Church St. hostel. [Detectives] would only say yesterday that Dahn was not convicted on the charges …
A detective at the time said Dahn was identified as the suspect without the help of the victim, who did not co-operate. (Toronto Sun, August 7, 2003) Lost near the grim Regent Park housing project on Tuesday night, Marco Anthony Ruscetta of Mississauga was shot in the neck when he asked a man passing on a bicycle for directions. His friends did not abandon him; they pulled him back into the car and flagged down an ambulance, but Ruscetta died in hospital. Next Saturday, at about 11:30 p.m. (!) at a subsidized townhouse complex in Rexdale, a group of men were sitting in the courtyard of the complex [steps away from a children’s birthday party] when passengers in a passing vehicle opened fire on them, police said. The seated men returned fire and 30 to 40 shots were exchanged. … [Police] Chief Julian Fantino was furious to learn about the treatment of his officers. ‘When my officers attended they were met once again with hostility from the surrounding crowd. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of behaviour, especially when we receive multiple 911 calls by residents.’ … [According to a 10-year-old girl at the scene, pointing from one side of the street to the other]: ‘People say Jamestown is Crips and Orpinton is Bloods,’ she said, matter-of-factly, while eating a purple Popsicle. (Globe and Mail, August 11, 2003) Frustrated beyond endurance, Fantino has asked: How can a young person get involved with drugs and guns and no one notices? How can so many people be killed and so many people be wounded in our community, and yet all of this is basically left to the police? And Zanana Akande of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations has responded: What body of police would ask the public citizens to in some way do their job? Er, that’s the spirit. Conversely, a Brampton man seeking help to rid his townhouse complex of a vicious street gang remains defiant after he fought off a brazen home invasion by six thugs armed with a stun gun, pellet gun, an axe and a knife. Sporting scars to his head, throat, chest and legs, Chad Letourneau, 38, described yesterday how six men ‘walked right into the house’ at 10 p.m. Monday and came at him ‘like a pack of wolves’, swiping, slashing and shooting at his face and chest with the weapons. Moments before they pounced, the punks pursed their lips in a ritualistic kissing motion. Letourneau … believes the attack is linked to his bid to form a Neighbourhood Watch at the townhouse complex. [He says] the attack is linked to a gang which calls itself ‘Bloods,’ [that] started its vendetta when it became aware of the Neighbourhood Watch proposal. … Letourneau said a young man connected with the gang was stopped by police in the complex Tuesday with a loaded sawed-off shotgun under his jacket. … At one point during Monday’s attack, Letourneau was pinned to the ground and saw an axe raised as if to chop him. … [He] not only repulsed the gang, but he turned the tables by hitting the axeman with a kitchen chair. He picked up the axe and the attackers ran out the front and back doors. …
He said he has some strong support in the complex, but many residents are apathetic, or are too scared to get involved. (Toronto Sun, August 7, 2003) Fortunately for Caribana, three separate levels of government are so lavish with the Danegeld that none seem to notice that this is pretty much what a government-sponsored culling programme would look like. Fresh off filing for another bankruptcy protection, Caribana this year enjoyed tax-extracted subsidies topping out over $1-million — $100,000 from federal coffers, $712,000 split between SARS-ravaged provincial and city treasuries and another $200,000 in provincial funds to advertise in select U.S. and Caribbean markets; attendance was nevertheless abysmal. May we make a modest proposal? Move the massively subsidized event to coincide with Black History Month — in February.