More about the Cons' Affirmative Action

Just when you thought a significant systemic shift occured in Canada in the last century, along comes Stevie Spiteful and his grim cabal of HarperCon bullies.

By way of @kady O'Malley, we hear that a Harper Government official is scheduled to make an announcement related to crime prevention in the lobby of the YMCA tomorrow. That's in Montreal, so it's not likely to be related to the crime promotion tirade for which Justice Dewar became recently notorious.

Though when you consider how the HarperCon notion of *justice* is situation -specific, it follows that Minister Nicholson would replace a progressive female judge with a male lawyer whose expertise lies in corporate/commercial litigation - one who donated to the CPC in 2008.

When you read the numerous accounts of Dewar's pontification, in which he morally exonerated convicted rapist Kenneth Rhodes by dubbing him "a clumsy Don Juan", one gets a sense of how the criminal prosecution system is being retro-fitted by the Cons into their own image.

That scheme will be policed by G20-type goons, staffed by ReformaTory appointments, and it will enable convicted cast in the good ol' boys mold to get away with, well ... probably murder too if it comes to that. And who do you think sex offender Rhodes will vote for, in the next federal election?

Plus ça change, plus les Cons se ressemblent.

h∕t k'in.

NOThing done about freezing Ben Ali clan assets.

The former dictator lies comatose in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, abandoned by family members who are no doubt scurrying about, secreting whatever's available of the MASSIVE fortune Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his thugs stole from the Tunisian people.

On Monday and Tuesday, BQ MP Jean Dorion tried in vain to secure from Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon a clear and straight answer about the assets held in Canada by the Ben Ali cabal. For two days running, Cannon supplied Con-voluted baffle-gab in response to pointed questions from Dorion.



Then the Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson took up the empty rhetoric refrain: "Our government is prepared to assist the Government of Tunisia in any manner while respecting our laws. We will continue to work with representatives of Tunisia on this file. Obviously, we all have a stake in ensuring that justice is done for the people of Tunisia."

Yesterday BQ leader Gilles Duceppe met the Tunisian ambassador - who says he has NOT received any communication whatsoever from Cannon or Nicholson.

At the end of January, Tunisian officials asked Canada to freeze assets held by the former President Ben Ali and his family, including illegal transfers of funds abroad. Ben Ali's family owns a house in Westmount valued at over $ 2 million.

[...] in an interview with The Associated Press the Ambassador of Tunisia in Ottawa Mouldi Sakri said the minister, Lawrence Cannon, has yet to respond to the request of Tunisia [...]

Belhassen Trabelsi, brother-in-law of the deposed president, fled to Canada following the uprising in Tunisia. He has permanent resident status, but the immigration department has taken steps to withdraw his status.

Cannon has invoked Canadian laws on privacy to justify his silence on this issue while Mr. Sakri has received no communication from Canadian officials.

"The Ben Ali must be frozen before they are squandered. The Ministry of Justice in Tunisia presented two requests to the Canadian government," he said.

[...] Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, who met yesterday with the Ambassador of Tunisia in his office on Parliament Hill, said the Harper government cannot shirk its responsibilities. [...]

"The ambassador hoped for a speedy response to his requests and at the very least a temporary freeze of assets, pending a final decision. Ben Ali family members are experts in fiscal evasion. Now they've been given plenty of time to move money to off-shore havens [...]" said Duceppe.

If the HarperCons had acted efficiently and competently, they would have bragged about it. Their evasive tactics in Question Period means neither Cannon nor Nicholson have done anything except procrastinate and put off Tunisian officials.

As fern hill said yesterday, Stevie and his bullies respect the power of money. In addition, they appear to feel ideologically synchronized with oligarchies that undermine the democratic process.

Stoopid on Governance

Remember this? It was yesterday.

"We don't govern on the basis of statistics," Nicholson said. "We govern on the basis of what we hear from the public and what law enforcement agencies tell us. That has not changed in the four and a half years we've been in government."

This is today.

A newly released government poll suggests most Canadians don't see crime as a big issue -- even as the Conservatives press on with their get-tough agenda.

When asked in January which issue the government should focus on most, only one per cent of people answered crime.

So that's the public heard from.

As for listening to law enforcement agencies, have a look at this website devoted to supporting the long-gun registry that the ReformaTories are so hot to kill.

Here are the first three organizations listed:

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police
The Canadian Police Association
The Canadian Association of Police Boards

Not paying any attention to the people, the experts, or the facts. That's our Conservativacy of Dunces.

(Psst, sister and fellow bloggers: You think the Opposition War Rooms are keeping tabs on us? They bloody well should be, we're doing all their research for them.)