Sask Party news release

Saskatchewan Party Leader Brad Wall wants to know why Lorne Calvert and NDP Justice Minister Frank Quennell have said and done nothing about gang activity and recent incidents of violent crime in Saskatoon.
“Saskatoon people are telling me that they don’t feel safe and they don’t feel their children are safe in their own homes and communities,” Wall said.
Wall said the Calvert NDP government needs to address the issue because Saskatchewan families should be able to live without fear.
“Cracking down on gang activities must be a priority for this government,” Wall said, noting that Saskatchewan has the highest per capita concentration of young gang members in the country, according to the Criminal Intelligence Service Saskatchewan Winter 2005 Report. PDF
“It’s a big issue across this province. First Nation Leaders have told us they are very concerned about increased gang activity on and off-reserve, and they are too are taking a leadership role on this,” Wall said. “We’ve offered to work with them on this issue.”
Wall said he is asking his Justice Critic, Saskatoon Southeast MLA Don Morgan, to take the lead on this issue by looking into possible solutions and by pushing the government for action. Ted Merriman (Community Resources and Employment), Don Toth (Corrections and Public Safety), and June Draude (First Nations and Metis Relations) will join Morgan on the committee.
[…]
“In 1991, Lorne Calvert said he dreamed of a province where everyone could feel safe walking the streets. After 14 years of NDP government, people don’t feel safe in Lorne Calvert’s own constituency. It’s time for Mr. Calvert to stop just dreaming, wake up and address the problem.”

Background: Sask crime stats.
Update (via Rawlco radio) – NDP MLA Pat Atkinson has responded, citing a “2 percent drop in crime” in Saskatchewan, and accusing the SaskParty of “scare tactics”. When questioned by local reporter Mervin Brass about how she would respond had her home been one of the four who experienced home invasions this last week, she replied that she’d “be scared”.
On a different front, the problem is impacting the real estate market, with local agents reporting that homes are becoming very hard to move in the Riversdale area.

Oh, just what we need in Saskatchewan – bigger roadkill.
H/T Saskdesk

Aboriginal youth gangs swarming festival goers and robbing buskers at the Fringe.
A weekend house party on Ave. H ending with 17 year old stabbed to death over a baseball cap. While police “interview witnesses” the home invasions by revenge seekers have begun – one involving the grandparents of a youth who was at the party. When they couldn’t find him, they trashed their home and vehicles.
Last night a 52 year old man answered a knock at his door and was hit with a baseball bat by one of four home invaders in masks. Holding a knife to his throat, they demanded cash and his video game system. A fourteen and a sixteen year old are in custody.
The mother of a witness to the Ave. H murder spoke on radio this morning. They are living in fear. There have been bricks through their windows and threats. In her words – “My son witnessed the murder. They know who it is. Why don’t they just go get him?”
Just another week in Saskatoon.

…one paycheque at a time.

The latest job numbers come from Sask Trends Monitor, Saskatchewan’s preeminent statistics publication and clearly show a disturbing trend of rapid government expansion. Overall employment grew by 1.4 per cent in the first seven months of the reporting year – well below the 2.1 per cent growth in Alberta and 1.7 per cent growth in Manitoba, but above the national average of 1.1 per cent.
Dig a little deeper into the numbers and you find that private sector employment grew by 1.7 per cent, while government employment grew nearly twice as fast. In fact, there are 5,000 more government employees today then there were back in 2002 – a staggering statistic given Saskatchewan’s stagnant population growth. What’s worse is that almost all of the new job growth is taken by people 55 years or older, which means we’re not attracting or keeping any young people in Saskatchewan.
Of course, this doesn’t stop the government from trumpeting their overwhelming success in economic development. Industry Minister Eric Cline said the job increases are a “testament to the diversification and strength of Saskatchewan’s economy.”
The economy is diverse if by “diverse” you mean the difference between various government departments. Cline also warns that this growth is a “double-edged sword” in that they are now having trouble filling some positions.
For taxpayers, an unfilled government position isn’t a liability, it’s a blessing.
Since 1995, our provincial government has grown its payroll by 12,190 bodies and hiked the average wage by 22 per cent. The number of working people sticking around in Saskatchewan to pay these wages is in slow but steady decline.

In 2002, 22.1 percent of Saskatchewan employees were on the public sector payroll.
This summer a budget stalemate in the state of Minnesota threatened to shut off the goverment funding tap completely. The news item I caught mentioned that legislators had even failed to reach agreement on emergency funding – raising the possibility that 5,000 state employees might go without pay cheques. As of 2000, Minnesota has a population of just under 5 million.
(Thanks to David MacLean of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, for sending this along)

The Saskatoon Fringe Festival is currently underway and runs from Aug. 4 – 14. From the Star Phoenix;

The Saskatoon International Fringe Festival boasts a new venue this year. Venue 9, the Cosmo Seniors Centre (614- 11th Street), offers a feast for the senses with performances by local dance companies in a variety of genres. The venue is dedicated to cultural diversity.
Saskatoon’s DancEgypt Dance company tells the story of an archaeologist who discovers an ancient amulet in an Egyptian tomb that takes him on a journey through time in Glimpses of the Amulet. It runs Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
Saskatchewan Contemporary Ballet, the province’s only professional ballet company, offers The Search for Selfhood. Sarah Nolan Downs is artistic director. Shows run Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 9 p.m.
Oryntal Majik by Oriental Dance Arts showcases a variety of multi-cultural belly-dancing from American tribal style to Oriental Raks Sharqui to Persian dance. It takes the stage Wednesday at 6 p.m.

And then, there’s the Indian Posse and other aboriginal gangs roaming about, stealing from buskers, swarming and robbing festival goers. Though police presence has been stepped up in reponse, problems continued last evening.
However, according to some, mentioning that the Indian Posse is “an aboriginal street gang from the west side of Saskatoon” is considered unacceptable profiling. One just doesn’t say such things out loud, because to do so is to declare “that all aboriginal people on the west side of Saskatoon are criminals”.
I suppose it could – if you’re some leftover remnant from the primordial big bang of Stupid.
Let’s hope these anti-profiling zealots defend motorcycle riders as stridently the next time the topic under discussion is the Hells Angels – for the Indian Posse and other various flavours of these gangs have done nothing more than adopt that same multi-provincial organized crime template and add a racial twist.
Before we can hope to push back this growing criminal cancer that ruins the lives of so many First Nations kids, before we can hope for an end to racially-motivated violence from both sides of the Saskatchewan River- we are going to have to engage and defeat the political correctspeak of the apologensia who place more importance on cultural sensitivity towards First Nations than they do lives of their children.

The Saskatoon Star Phoenix lays out the bottom line on the continuing meltdown at the First Nation’s University of Canada in an editorial that might as easily been titled “Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Academia”;

Having created a segregationist institution to bring “Indian control to Indian education,” the least that can be done is to ensure that FNUC can provide young aboriginal people with a high-quality education that transcends the undercurrent of parochialism and xenophobia that have been exposed within FNUC and FSIN in recent months. Unless there are strong indications within weeks that changes are forthcoming to make FNUC truly independent and worthy of being called a university, the U of S should withdraw its representation on FNUC’s board and the U of R should move to end the affiliation that grants degrees to FNUC’s graduates.

h/t Terry O’Neill;

There’s lots of local coverage on the fire that destroyed half of the downtown of Milden, SK. on Sunday.
A few anecdotes – the fire appears to have been started by a combination of high wind and downed powerlines, which ignited the buildings so quickly that they were fully engulfed within minutes. The pharmacist is reported as having risked his life getting the town’s firetruck out of the burning firehall, nearly collapsing from smoke inhalation after getting it to safety.
The residents not involved in fighting the main fire tended the many grass fires throughout town that were ignited by the burning shingles blowing from the roof of the lumber mart. It’s an extremely fortunate thing indeed that this did not happen at night, or it’s possible that lives would have been lost.
To nobody’s surprise, residents of the two Hutterite colonies turned up with sandwiches and bottled water to keep firefighters fed and hydrated, all without anyone making a call.
The cleanup has already begun, and as everything was insured, Milden is already looking forward to rebuilding. All in a day’s work for a village of 260.

Other photos here andhere, as well as on my Sunday post.

Darcey, at Dust My Broom has a link rich post sketching out the continuing meltdown at First Nations University. *

The latest casualty of First Nations University is none other than Tyrone Tootoosis of the Poundmaker Working Group. He was recently locked out of his office and has expressed in an email that he wasn’t surprised based upon the vindictiveness of some of the people who are now in charge.

What he doesn’t mention is size and nature of the board in charge of this mess.

Two of the three people who replaced the suspended staff appear to have no experience in university academic or administrative circles. They do seem to have strong connections to the current FSIN leadership.
Al Ducharme, who took over as administration vice-president, is described as a close friend of Grand Chief Alphonse Bird, while Florence Watson, the sister-in-law of Vice-chief Watson, was appointed director of finance.
The board’s actions, apparently done at the behest of the FSIN leadership, reflect a serious problem in governance, Stevenson said. The majority of the members of the university’s board of governors are political appointees, and appear more interested in building political bases than with the welfare of the university, he alleged.
The FNUC’s board of governors has more members- and political employees-than the boards governing Saskatchewan’s other two universities. Sixteen members are appointed by provincial tribal councils, the FSIN senate or the FSIN. Three are appointed by students. The federal and provincial governments, the universities of Regina and Saskatchewan and the FNUC faculty appoint one member each.

Breaking news that the town of Milden is currently on fire. Winds are high today – it reportedly started about 2 hours ago – they’ve already lost the fire station and three businesses. I’m going to head out there to see if I can get any photos.
update
I arrived after the fire was well under control. Half of the west side of their main street has burned to the ground, as well as an old shed that was a couple of blocks away, evidently ignited by burning embers. They lost the fire station, a hardware/lumber store, the doctor’s office and a carwash. It could have been much, much worse. Winds are heavy today, from 50 – 70km per hour. That they managed to protect the east side of the business section, as well as the hotel and cafe next door, was very fortunate – no doubt aided by the wide main streets typical of small prairie towns. The town is well treed, with many older frame homes. Had the fire jumped the street, it’s likely it would have moved rapidly and swept through the houses on the east side of town. There was also a service station, complete with above ground tanks, potentially in its path.
Lots of activity, the fire departments of several towns on the scene, as well as a good number from the local Hutterite community. SaskPower and SaskTel were also there to tend to power and telephone issues.
I met the CTV News van on the drive home.
Unfortunately my digital camera crapped out, so I’ve only a few photos for the moment. I did have the 35mm though, and when I’ve gotten those developed in a day or two, I’ll scan and post them. (Likewise, if anyone knows of someone in the area with photos from earlier in the day, they’re welcome to send them to me via email, and I”ll host them.)
Click on the photos for larger versions:

Over the airwaves (650CKOM) just now – two planes have collided and burst into flame during a performance of the “Masters of Disaster”, at the Moose Jaw Air Show.
(Their website.)
A commentor has provided this one as well.
6:35 pm local time – it’s just been reported that both pilots have died. Sadly, it’s reported that the son of one of the pilots was in the announcer’s booth when the mid-air collision occured.
The performances on the weekend were dedicated to Capt. Miles Selby, the Snowbird pilot who died during a mid-air collision during practice near the base, on Dec.10 of last year.
(Later: With the news conference playing in the background – can anyone explain to my satisfaction why one of the authorities answering questions – in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, with a room full of local reporters – feels compelled to answer in French???)

Janice Johnson says Charles Meechance walked into her living room, flashed a thick wad of $50 and $100 bills, and asked her to hand over her blank mail-in ballot for the upcoming Red Pheasant First Nation election.�

She took the money.
If Meechance purchased enough votes to win the election, one has to consider the old adage about voters who get “the government they deserve”.

… and various prairie towns clean upfrom wild weather over the last 24 hours, I would like to thank whoever it is responsible for the global warming that is restoring our traditional weather patterns here on the prairies.
Three years ago, we went an entire summer without a thunderstorm. It looked like this.

Thunderheads glowering in the west at the end of a day baked by an unrelenting sun, the sudden gust as the storm front hits, moving the vehicles to shelter and securing buildings as the dust swirls and raindrops begin to pelt – that’s the weather I remember.
So far, it’s just a watch. If things start to look really good, I’ll go storm chasing with my camera tonight.

Via local radio: A 150 million dollar Sask Power construction project in the Swift Current area was destroyed last night by a tornado. Included in the damage is a 300 ft. crane laying on it’s side.
It was a wind energy project.

One would think that with all the newly announced billions and billions of funding for the RCMP and other security enhancements from the Libranos, that there might be an actual strengthening of policing in border areas of the western prairies – where it is possible to cross virtually anywhere by virtue of miles of unfenced fields, unarmed customs agents and a sparse rural population.
Today a letter has been leaked that the Calvert NDP (no doubt smarting from the electoral smackdown the rural region delivered in the last election) have approved RCMP detachment closures in Climax, Eastend and eventually, other small rural towns and RM’s in the Southwest and elsewhere. Buildings and offices will be closed and personnel will be redeployed and transferred elsewhere. (info via Rawlco radio)
The history that began with the NorthWest Mounted Police has come full circle. So, if you’re thinking of smuggling arms and other prohibited whatnot into Canada, the historic route to Fort Whoop Up has just been re-opened.
Liveblogging : Frank Quennell, Sask Justice Minister is now being interviewed – the reason for the closures is due to the primary concern of the RCMP for officer safety and unavailability of backup in one-person detachments in rural Saskatchewan. See the earlier comment about the disconnect between announced funding and staffing levels.
That’s reassuring for the people who live there, I’m sure.
He finally admits that his office gave approval to the RCMP request without any advance notice or discussion with any of the communities impacted. In other words, Saskatchewan Justice was planning to let the RCMP break the news locally.

I’m used to tapping out entries at PolSpy on a high speed cable Internet connection. I’m currently sitting out on my in-law’s farm and connected to the Net at the blistering speed of 28.8 Kbps (with a 56K modem, no less).

This sucks.

I am utterly amazed that Kate has been able to keep up the blogging pace that she has for the past couple of years using dialup. I’ve been bugging her on and off to get satellite for the last few months, but she’s the type who is afraid to open her wallet in case she accidentally lets the moths out. So she continues to suffer along on an Internet connection that moves slower than Canada’s parliamentary process.

An Xplornet KA band dish costs about $400.00. I’m guessing installation is around another $400.00 as the dish has to be installed by a certified technician. The service itself costs around $80.00 per month.

Folks, there’s gotta be a way that we can help Kate get herself one of these high speed satellite dishes. Would those of you can’t get through your day without a visit to SDA be willing to donate a few $$$ towards Kate’s connection if she added a PayPal Donation button to the site? Would you buy merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, posters, etc.) with her art work on it from a Cafe Press store if we help her set one up? Would you like to buy some advertising space on what looks to be a well-run, very high traffic site?

Please drop a comment if you have any ideas on how we can help Kate out here.

And you really should, because at some point the ten minute page load times are going to cause Kate to snap and plaster SDA from top to bottom with Google Ads. You may think that’s not such a bad idea, but think again. Google Ads are context sensitive.

Local news is reporting that after a band election at Clearwater River First Nation north of La Loche resulted in violence, RCMP were called in, only to be pelted with stones as they tried to apprehend suspects.
There have been several incidents of this type involving the RCMP in the province this year. It’s just a matter of time before we have another Mayerthorpe. With the RCMP lacking the capacity to pursue white collar crime and money laundering, a justice system that rewards those with multiple drunk driving fatalities with a comfy bed and scenic setting in a “healing lodge”, when judges are heckled as “racists” by prisoners and peanut gallery alike, and media giggles over criminality in the highest offices of the land as “Liberal shenanigans” – why would petty criminals and local rabble rousers respect the average constable?
An anonymous reader writes;

At present, the Commissioner acts as a Deputy Minister and reports to the Liberal government.To be reasonably arm’s length he should be reporting to Parliament instead if there is to be integrity built into the system. He knows the government has underfunded the RCMP for years but takes the public line that they are adequately funded which is nonsense. They are really short at least 2500 “experienced”officers if they are to do their jobs in a timely manner.
Taking about 18 years to get the Air India case to trial, about 20 years to deal with the tainted blood (because of connections) 7 years for the Bre-X mining scam and the report yesterday, that they didn’t have enough resources to deal with money laundering are not examples of operating in the optimum manner.
All sections of the RCMP are underfunded and understaffed despite the rosy assurances of the Public Security Minister with her fictitious $10 billion for security. (it was $8 billion over 5 years and they added $2 billion for PR but nobody knows where the extra $2 billion came from..They are living on their laurels from 20 years ago. The height of BS was when one of their senior officers said about a month ago it would take 18 months to investigate the murders of the 4 RCMP officers. This would have been priority #1 and it appears this was to allow the elections to slide through without embarrassing the government over the fact that an assault rifle was used by Roszko to kill the officers making the $1.5 billion gun registry useless.

Apropos of no particular Canadian Football League commissioner, I’ll start this off.
“We’ll treat him like any other CFL Commissioner and take his panties off one leg at a time.”
It’s fun! Create your own!

I’ve been home a couple of hours, mostly cleaning the house and cleaning up my email inbox. I probably won’t do much more blogging tonight, but I have a treat for you. Lance has several posts up on his impressions after doing a grocery run for the Poundmaker Working Group. The first;

I found Democracy and it wasn’t in a Greek text, it wasn’t in England, it wasn’t in Regina, it wasn’t in “parliamentary tradition”. I found Democracy in the hearts and minds of thirty people trying to get their little piece of the world back in their hands. It was in the majority of the band backing them, it was in Tyrone Tootoosis picking out the groceries, and Diane filming the reenactment of the move from Jacob’s place to the present site of the Band office (not quite, but only a km away). Democracy was in Marvin recounting the accident on the Pow-Wow grounds. Democracy shone and the clouds parted. They’ve finished sitting, the trail did not grow over, they are finding their way back.

Be sure to read them all.

Lance is going to be making a grocery run to the Poundmaker group’s band office sit-in on the weekend.

I’ll be making a grocery / phone card run up to Poundmaker on Saturday morning depending on the amount of stuff to take up. Help increase the stuff by making a PayPal donation. [there’s a link for that on his site – ed]
I just talked to Diane Tootoosis at Poundmaker to get an idea of what is necessary food wise. I’ll be providing her with the receipts of the foodstuffs and phone cards. She also requested names of the donors, if you don’t want that, let me know, (lance@catprint.ca). Her list, in addition to phone cards for the cell, was: breads, fruit, vegetables, meat (stored off-site in a freezer), and easy to store dry goods like pasta and rice. I’ll probably pick this up in the Battlefords.

Background – there have been “inconsistancies” in the band governance and elections, and this group is attempting to force some accountability.
Full story at Dust My Broom.

Publius;

Canada also granted its subject peoples independence.� Just like other old imperialists the Canadian government replaced its old colonial budget with a new colonial budget.� The new term in Canada was development assistance, the same type of euphemism as foreign aid.� In Canada the term for independence was self government.� What that meant was that accountability in how government funds were spent would henceforth be non-existent.� The western governments of the 1970s and 1980s didn’t ask how their foreign aid money was being spent.� Such an act of intrusion into the affairs of now sovereign states was a form of neo-colonialism. The Canadian government behaved in the same way toward our “First Nations.”�
No matter how many black eyed women, gasoline sniffing juveniles and drunken Indians began appearing on the nightly news casts the blame was always whitey’s.� We interfered before, reasoned the bien pensants, look what happened.� Let’s just stay clear.� It’s an internal matter.� To assuage our guilt we’ll just send a cheque.
To me the aboriginal population of Canada are Canadians.� If we treat them as something separate, something to which – literally – the laws of Canada cannot apply we will never truly give a damn.� We can treat them as ex-colonial subjects.� We can buy into the post-colonial line about exploitation and long term cultural damage.� We can continue to sign the cheques.� We can continue to be damn smug about it all.� Or we can raise one hell of a fuss.� A group at the Poundmaker Reserve are making a fuss.� A few bloggers are making a fuss.� This time it isn’t about whitey.� It hasn’t been about whitey for some time.� The Japanese in Canada had their property confiscated and their liberty revoked during the Second World War.� Their fate was in some ways harsher than that of the Aboriginals.� Yet, they have succeeded.
Perhaps the real reason the Japanese, the Indian Indians, the Chinese and many others succeeded in Canada was because no one tried to help.� No one felt guilty about the injustices leveled at them until long after they can became successful members of Canadian society.� Racism wasn’t the problem as much as welfare handouts.
Hopefully the rebels at Poundmaker understand that.� The last thing we need is to get rid of the new imperialists and see them replaced by the same old, same old.

Darcey, at Dust My Broom got the ball rolling on this one, and others have joined in to publicize the story. He has a number of posts up detailing the events.
London Fog, BumF, Ianism, Debbye, Catprint In The Mash, GenX 40, Mitchieville,
Blank Out Times.
Request for Support;

Poundmaker Working Group;
Dianne J.Tootoosis
Box 490
Cut Knife,Sask.
SOM ONO

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For Monetary Donations;
Dianne J.Tootoosis
Cut Knife Royal Bank
Savings Account # 7000763
Transit # 1768