Cold, Wet Hands

90 Replies to “Cold, Wet Hands”

1. HEEEE,Heeeee,heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…..
   Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out….. 😉

2. A friend of mine applied to the RCMP after getting out of the army. He was late 20’s after a ten year career. He was a captain, bilingual, engineering degree from RMC, and most recently employed as head of the EOD team covering all of Ontario. He was rejected. His wife, who had spent the last decade being a wife and mother applied as a lark, and was accepted. She didn’t join, she only applied to see what would happen. This is going on 20 years ago now.

3. average joe…your comment is despicable and, if you any sense of decency, you would apologize.

4. And stupid.

5. Observer – if you want an echo chamber go to the CBC web site, there is diversity of opinion here. And the reason you were argued with here was because your rationale was anything but logical – it is logical fallacy to presume there was no collusive criminal breech in this unwarranted entry and seizure when all evidence points to it.
   As a matter of course most political events and social movements in history are brought about as a natter of conspiracy of a small group of elites to unfold events which favor their cause – history is rife with conspiracy, most crime and government malfeasance is a matter of conspiracy – it take a mind closed to fact to believe the “coincidece” theory of history and politics – no mistaking politics/policy/poroms when you see them – unless you are committed to be willfully blind to history and common abuse of power.

6. Oh, and hey Observer – I;m willing to see what the judges in an inquiry brought by citizen complaint reveals about your faultless RCMP – are you?
   Or would the judges be conspiracy nuts for finding collusive liability?

7. Well, one could argue, in response, that “I’m sure this nonsense will end when [Trudeau, Sr. gets his Charter of Rights and Freedoms].” Section 8, actually.
   It’s not precisely clear to me what Mr. Harper has to do with any of this, doubly so since his astonishing intervention in favour of the arbitrarily-expropriated property owners: I had thought that ensuring the accountability of a de facto provincial law-enforcement agency would have rested with, you know, the provincial authorities, doubly so, since the BNA Act assigns “Property and Civil Rights” to the Provinces. Section 92 (13), actually; I say doubly so since “The Administration of Justice in the Province”, in the first instance, falls under section 92 (14).
   What? The provinces aren’t capable of managing their own business? That’ll go over well, doubly so when “Harper [,the control freak that he is] gets his majority.” I’m guessing, of course, but I’m confident that we’ll by hearing from Mr. Trudeau, Jr. any time now that Mr. Harper has committed a grave offence under Canadian federalism, which criticism will have nothing to do, of course, with the affected province, and rather more to do with a, um, province not so directly involved in the matter…
   On the other hand, I am surprised that the RCMP released such a damaging video. Aside from Mr. Bernardo’s capably-stated and utterly reasonable criticisms, the video reveals another little tater/factoidee thingee: not even the police could get there from here. Here’s an idea: why not just patrol for unauthorized boats in the area? Seems a bit, er, simpler, really. Can’t they even manage the blindingly obvious, anymore, or were they just deliberately trying to sabotage what was going on?
   Here’s my responsory grunt: the essential question is, “who authorized this, and why?” Appropriate resignations and honest answers from the provincial authorities would go a long way to easing the pain that will inevitably be inflicted on the country if we have to go through a public inquiry process. But, if we have to go through all of that process to get to the bottom of it (and I mean the bottom), so be it.
   As I have said before, I have no particular interest in firearms. And one of the several reasons for that is that all of the firearms owners I know (which are many) are among the most responsible, intelligent, capable and personable people I have ever met (and who can break into a recitation of firearms regulations on the least provocation). None would have ever mis-stored a firearm, under any circumstance.

8. Really, how dare I stray from the narrow approved opinion on this site?
   The awkwardness of people raiding the confiscated money of the public treasury while complaining about confiscation of property doesn’t get much comment either. heh

9. Joey, for future reference. It is settled law in Canada that a building is not the same as a dwelling place in the law. The bar is much, much higher for the police to enter a Dwelling Place vs to enter just a building. I leave you with this. “The words of Alexis de Tocqueville in Book Four, Chapter VI of
   Democracy America are particularly poignant:
   I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a democratic
   state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular
   facilities for the establishment of despotism…
   I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic
   nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the
   world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their
   memories. I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey
   the whole of the idea I have formed of it, the old words despotism and
   tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot
   name, I must attempt to define it.
   I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in
   the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an
   innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly
   endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they
   glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the
   fate of all the rest,–his children and his private friends constitute
   to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he
   is close to them, but he sees them not;–he touches them, but he feels
   them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his
   kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his
   country.
   Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which
   takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch
   over their gate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
   mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that
   authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on
   the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content
   that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but
   rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but
   it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness;
   it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities,
   facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs
   their industr, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
   inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking
   and all the trouble of living?
   This, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less
   useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower
   range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The
   principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has
   predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as
   benefits.
   After having thus successfully taken each member of the community in
   its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then
   extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of
   society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform,
   through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters
   cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not
   shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it
   to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power
   does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but
   it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till
   each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and
   industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
   I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle
   kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is
   commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it
   might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the
   people….
   It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men
   in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to
   think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it
   were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other.
   Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day, and is felt by the
   whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance,
   but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the
   exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and
   their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a
   few important but rare occasions, only exhibits servitude at certain
   intervals, and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is
   vain to summon a people, who have been rendered so dependent on the
   central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that
   power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however
   important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the
   faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus
   gradually falling below the level of humanity.
   I add, that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and
   only privilege which remains to them….

10. “It’s not precisely clear to me what Mr. Harper has to do with any of this, doubly so since his astonishing intervention in favour of the arbitrarily-expropriated property owners”
    David –
    The RCMP are a FEDERAL Para military police force who report to a RCMP chief commissioner who is by law “under the direction” of Harper’s minister of public safety, as per the change in chain of command Chretien implemented by act of parliament. K division of the RCMP are contracted out to Alberta to serve as a provincial force but they still answer to Ottawa – and if they follow a “policy” it comes from Ottawa not Edmonton. Redford pays Ottawa for the use of K division but the chain of command/responsibility for action and policy rests in Ottawa.
    Either the chain of command was interrupted by local provincial officials or K division acted on its own or Ottawa has turned a blind eye to RCMP questionable unwarranted entery/search and seizure policy – or maybe they rubber stamped it. In any event, Harper being the micro manager of his cabinet/caucus he is, final responsibility rests with him.
    Here we have a case not unlike provincial CFOs disobeying federal firearms law protocol where RCMP are now abusing Harper’s core support base – you would think seeing how he has complete leeway over making RCMP adhere to his policies that he would be vigorously going after those who breeched protocol and are culpable in this break and enter atrocity – all I hear is crickets chirping in the PMO.

11. Toqueville used “Democracy” in a slightly different way than we do. Today, it means one man, one meaningless vote as the state bureaucracy continues.
    In his day, the America he visited, there was no state bureaucracy. The government provided the apparatus of law and that’s all. The people discussed and argued various policies between themselves; the legislatures had not assumed omnipotence.

12. Idiot why do you think we’re so upset over this? Because it’s ludicrous does not mean it didn’t happen. Because it’s ludicrous and it involves the RCMP it’s most likely it did happen.

13. The RCMP are federal force and Harper is responsible for selectively targeting the LGR while maintaining the RCMP power to look into gun owner’s homes without warrant, which is really worse than the LGR.

14. All quite true Robert of Ottawa. But he was referring to the future, I think it applies quite well to today, and how we have lost our rights and liberties. Drip by drip, complaint by complaint. The State erected the fences and gates at the insistence of the sheep. In Canada today we live in a velvet gulag of laws and rules and regulations that are equivalent to a stack of paper over 10 stories high. Hell in some communities they even tell you whether you can hang clothes out to dry on your own property. It is the well fed and coddled folk of Canada who allowed the rights and freedoms to be watered down and now live under the tyranny of the few, who bitch about everything from a cat not on a leash to the colour of paint on your house. By the many little things we have lost the big things. Now return to your cage and behave good sir. Peace Order and Good Government vs Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Keep pulling at the oars of the slave ship Canada.

15. Canadian Obamaserver,
    You’re doing a good job.

16. Agreed. Anarchism is not the answer. However, someone needs their knuckles rapped.
    Someone commented that at 6 homes an hour it would have taken 40 days to search all the homes. It seems to be quite clear that these fellows knew exactly where to go. So much for the registry being done away with, and all the data being erased.
    RFB, losing our freedoms drip by drip is exactly what Hayek warned about in his 1940s book The Road to Serfdom.

17. You’re right; would this be better,”The RCMP behaved like looters and should be charged like looters.”
    I have a great deal of respect for you, but very little for a few of the RCMP I have encountered. Based on your experience was there any need for the RCMP to confiscate firearms in High River?

18. Just remembered the name of an Albertan lawyer who would be ideal for launching a class action lawsuit against the HRGT (High River gun thieves). Richard Fritze is a Red Deer lawyer with an interest in protecting the rights of gun owners. His website is at:
    http://www.fritze.com/
    This action of the HRGT is extremely concerning to all Canadian gun owners and what is needed is a complete cleanout of the HRGT organization with, hopefully, those who gave illegal orders going to jail. Those who obeyed illegal orders should find some other line of work.
    I’m ready to toss in a couple of hundred dollars in support of any class action law suit and I suggest that every Canaadian gun owner also chip in if you want to maintain basic rights in this country.

19. Your comment Occam should be read and reread three or four times – your follow up comments also. The historical quote posted by RFB from Alexis de Toqueville makes all the outrage in High River make sense.
    Excellent posts all. I share your outrage. We are a nation living in fear. We see the chaos next door and we know that we are in deep trouble…Canadians choose the servitude route long before the Americans and but for the Grace of God and PMSH we would be so far down that “Road to Serfdom” that we would not be having any discussion here; the Troika (Blocistas/Liberanos/Dippers) would have confiscated all our kitchen knives by now.

20. If you think PMSH is going to make any difference to this process then you have no understanding of The Road to Serfdom.

21. Well, it is not often, but I agree with you. Sorry Jema54. PM Harper may or may not be momentarily arresting the inevitable, as Margaret Thatcher did. This march to totalitarianism is too far gone down the road. Hayek also said (paraphrased) that you will know the tipping point has been reached when the government begins to tell you how to live your life.
    We are past that point, and this Cheka style affront is only the most visible manifestation at the moment.

22. Your friend was successful because he was willing and very capable of thinking for himself – the last thing any police bureaucracy needs or wants. If I’m not mistaken most police forces will turn down applicants who have an IQ above average – 110 is likely the cut-off point. The Neo-Prussian education model prevails.

23. Occam…..I too have heard the contention “it is settled law in Canada that a building is not the same as a dwelling place in the law. The bar is much, much higher for the police to enter a Dwelling Place vs to enter just a building”. But I haven’t been able to find any case law in that regard. Do you have a case in which that distinction is made?

24. “…If I’m not mistaken most police forces will turn down applicants who have an IQ above average – 110 is likely the cut-off point…”
    Hear! Hear!
    Spoken like a man with an IQ of 111 !

25. Cases…tort…
    Try the Criminal code….definitions.

26. A few points to consider. The RCMP is a Federal force that is contracted to the Provincial government. In other words don’t go blaming PM Harper for not fixing Redfraud’s screw up. In a Confederation like Canada the Provinces are the senior level of government and any meddling by the Federal government is a non starter. Also the HRGT (High River Gun Thieves) did property damage to houses that were not in danger of flooding by breaking in the front door and searching. Personally I would love to see the people go after the HRGT and the HRGT’s political masters AKA Alison Redford, Doug Griffith etc who are PROVINCIAL politicians. DO NOT use this to stoke your anti-Harper hatred as he is acting exactly as the PM of Canada should act in these circumstances.

27. No wrong the PM should stand up for the rights of Canadians and DO SOMETHING about the RCMP and kill the legislation that allows this to happen. Instead Harper is being a coward just like he was with Caledonia and you’re all but lying to cover for him. Go away PMO Palace Guards.

28. LAS your lack of education is showing again. Especially the part on civics. FYI the PM can NOT change or alter provincial legislation. Also we Canadians don’t have Property rights and if you doubt me read Trudeau’s Charter of Butt Wipe er I mean Charter of Rights. We don’t have property rights because enough provincial premiers said “no” to property rights and the Socialist PM agreed with them. So unless you want PM Harper to open the Pandora’s box of Constitution Reform there isn’t a whole bunch he can do other than take the moral high ground and let the people of High River know that even though they didn’t vote the way Redford hoped and are thus being punished by the vindictive premier and her lackeys he recognizes the rightness of the home owner’s cause.
    On a slightly related note: Giving a Coles Notes synopsis, under the QR&Os a soldier obeying a lawfully given order can not be charged with a civilian offense. eg I was cleared of shooting a bear out of season because it could be shown that I was acting on the orders of my OC (Officer Commanding not Commanding Officer there is a difference). Does this apply to the RCMP as well or could they be charged individually since no one seems to be able to find the order to break down the doors and take the guns. Personally I think it came from Alison Redford but verbally from one of her henchmen. Plausible Deny-ability and all you know.

29. Hmmmm…..no lucky, really. The Criminal Code definitions really don’t make a distinction between a dwelling and a building. There must be some seminal case where the distinction has been made in law, but I can’t find it.

30. “In this time of great emergency, you want us to believe the local constabulary had no other commitments or responsibilities to tend to so it is not a stretch to think they would take precious manpower and resources to break into homes for absolutely no other reason than to confiscate guns that they knew they would be returning to the owners anyways.”
    Exactly that, except for the returning part. Read the exact statements form the rubberbooted thug (must be an uncomfortable change from the usual jackboot). Owners have to present a proof of ownership to have the goons graciously return the robbed property. What proof of ownership? In case you missed the news long gun registry is officially gone. Exactly, a lot of them will never see their property returned due to lack of proof that they had it in the first place. “Sorry, tough luck, nothing to see here, move along” will be the answer.

31. The LGR legislation included a section allowing the RCMP to do this. Again, I am smarter than you. You should STFU on subjects you are ignorant of.

32. LAS they entered the building under the Alberta Emergency Measures Act (Local Emergency and Provincial Emergency) and yes both of those acts allow police to enter homes without a warrant. They did not need the LGR (by which I assume you mean C 68) nor did they ever say they did because then their justification would have been that they went looking for guns. In this case their justification was they were seeing (as is part of the Alberta EM Act) if anyone or animal was trapped in the flooded house and IF they saw a rifle laying about they took it with them.
    See you are not nearly as smart as you think you are.

33. And you aren’t quite as smart as you believe yourself to be, LAS.
    Bill C-68 has expanded the rights of the police to search. Before C-68, the general reason any police could use to obtain a warrant for entry to your home was by making a sworn statement before a justice that an offense had been committed and that the search was necessary to find evidence. The police could then use this warrant of search and seizure to enter your house and take items that were evidence of an offense.
    Bill C-68 changes this substantially. A firearms officer, who is a specially designated police officer, can OBTAIN A WARRANT to search your home if there is the allegation that ten or more firearms are present. This does not require any allegation of wrong-doing or of a prior offense.
    The C-68 warrant is NOT A WARRANT OF SEIZURE, only of search. But when the police find the slightest items that offends the strict storage laws or the confusing prohibited weapon regulations or any other technical irregularity, they can use that evidence to obtain a warrant of search and seizure to gather the evidence of the offense.
    The Charter of Rights and Freedoms tells you in section 8: “You have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure”. What is “unreasonable”? The first step in “what is unreasonable grounds” to believe an offense has been committed. First the police must know that the law was broken. This eliminates random checks and routine stops and inspections. To arbitrarily stop any citizen and say “I am searching you to find out if you possibly broke the law” is the epitome of unreasonable search. The RCMP were fishing…..illegally.

34. Yea – the Alberta RCMP are Renta- cops, nothing to do with Harper.
    Everything to do with Redfraud because its she who’s shoes they shine.

35. Walter..I have been gone for over ten years. but I was involved in a number of high profile investigations where, at the outset, we knew that we going to be screwed in the court of public opinion regardless of what we did. Recall the case a number of years ago wherein we chose to execute a search warrant AFTER the federal election took place. We were pilloried in the press for weeks. Had we chosen to execute the warrant prior to the election, we would have been savaged by the press for interfering with the electoral process. There is just no winning in such circumstances.
    In these circumstances, a similar situation exists, at least in my opinion. Had the RCMP in High River not checked all dwellings pursuant to the EMA, then later, if it turned out that an 84 year widow, for example, had starved to death in her home, then the good citizens of High River would understandably have descended on the RCMP detachment with pitchforks and torches, baying for revenge. Moreover, had they chosen to leave unsecured weapons in the house when they spotted them, and some looter got ahold of one of them and used it in a violent crime, people would equally be calling for RCMP to be sanctioned.
    I learned very early in my career that sometimes, regardless of what you do, there is going to be a faction of society that that is going to criticize you for whatever you do. I never particularly enjoyed it, but learned to live with it as just another aspect of a job that I loved and, as it turned out, was particularly good at.

36. Oh cry me a river you jackbooted thug.
    1. Your comrades have singled out houses of gun owners; none cared about an 84 year widow starving in houses where the thugs had no reason to expect to find guns.
    2. Those are “firearms” not “weapons”. the fact that you refer to them as “weapons” tells me a lot about your frame of mind.
    3. They did not “spot” any firearms, they have ransacked houses looking specifically for them and nothing but them.*
    4. No looter would have been going though the place unless they went through the door conveniently opened for them by the JNTs who claimed first pickings on the loot.
    *Ok that may not be fair – at least in one case they appear to have raided a lingerie drawer.

37. “you would think seeing how he [Harper] has complete leeway over making RCMP adhere to his policies that he would be vigorously going after those who breeched protocol and are culpable in this break and enter atrocity…”
    I utterly agree with your characterization: “atrocity”, meaning “enormous wickedness; extreme criminality or cruelty” (Wiktionary, for convenience), is not too strong a word. I’d go so far as to say that the muddy footprints on the bedroom carpet, indicated in Mr. Lilley’s report, might as well have been bloody footprints on the carpet: this is a crime scene. It looked to me like a family home — a room made for any number of possibilities and/or difficulties that law-abiding persons, everywhere, encounter over the course of their lives. (I’m taking it as read, of course, that at least some residents have been “allowed” back into their homes, a situation that would have allowed those photographs to be legitimately generated.)
    I do not agree, however, that, on the basis of the information we have so far, we can say on whose authority the RCMP was acting — the crown in right of Canada, or the crown in right of Alberta (circumstantially, at least, I happen to believe it was the latter, as you know, and I have made a good case for that position). And I do not agree that the prime minister of the day (Mr. Harper or otherwise), or any of his/her ministers, can automatically override the expressed direction of the government of a province, in so far as the RCMP acts as a provincial police force. Regardless, I do agree, that whoever approved this egregious action needs to pay a very heavy price, both in terms of immediate resignations, and, ultimately, electoral defeat.
    On the other hand, however, this difficulty presents enormous opportunities. We cannot rely on the conventional media to investigate any of the foregoing issues, which is actually a great advantage. There is a great canard around here, namely, that there are no property rights in Canada. Somehow, folks seem to think that the US Constitution confers differential rights in respect of property versus the Canadian constitution: read the US Constitution (specifically, amendments 4 and 5).
    In respect of this situation, I’d refer you to sections 8, 12, and 26 of the Charter. In particular, I’d argue that section 8 infers property rights (moveable chattels, at least; would firearms fall under that category?) and that section 26 allows for the continuation of common-law rights in respect of all property — including real estate, upon which due taxes have been paid. Section 12 goes to the points of agreement in my second paragraph. Ontario certainly has an “Expropriation Act”, which I’m guessing most other provinces do, as well; the Ontario Act, at least, contains FMV, which would cover the “just compensation” provision of the 5th amendment.
    We have multiple options, going forward, as I see it:
    – immediate resignations of all involved;
    – judicial inquiry (as you correctly suggested);
    – class-action lawsuit, against the RCMP (“I cannot believe I just wrote those words,” channeling Coyne, in respect of Whatcott);
    – constitutional challenge at the SCOC re: multiple issues involved, as discussed.

38. “jack-booted thug”?
    I normally do not reply to such idiodic comments, but feel compelled to advise you to resume your meds…you clearly have some serious problems.

39. You are right, the technical term appears to be “rubber-booted thugs”, there satisfied?
    Thugs that have raided houses for “weapons”. Thugs primarily interested in maintaining their monopoly on violence and demonstrating to law abiding gun owners that who is the boss.

40. Going back 10 or 20 years, I might agree with you, Bruce. Now police have better ways of figuring out where the 84 year old widows live alone than assuming it’s whoever has a firearms license.