Canada to pay Muslim terrorist C$10.5 million for killing US soldier

This story broke earlier this week. I'm commenting only today because at first I couldn't believe it. I'm only just now getting my head around it.

The man on the right is Omar Khadr -- Canadian citizen, Muslim fanatic, former "child soldier" fighting with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The man on the left [appropriately. Ed.] is self-styled "global citizen" Justin Trudeau, son and heir of Pierre Himself and now Prime Minister of the Not-so-great Not-so-white North.

Justin Trudeau is an Islamophile -- not an Islamophobe but an Islamophile, meaning he loves Islam and the followers of the Prophet. It seems he never met a Muslim he didn't like (especially those who vote), including Omar Khadr. So great is the regard that M Trudeau and his alleged government have for Mr Khadr that they are about to give him C$10,500,000 (= over $8 million in real money) in "compensation" for having his "Charter rights" violated by the governments of Canada and the USA. (No word yet on whether the American government will be asked to pony up part of the loot.)

What happened is this. Although only a lad of 15, Mr Khadr was able to raise a pretty good crop of chin whiskers, so immediately when to the Middle East sandpit to join his fanatical Muslim brethren in the fight against the evil Christian crusaders. In July of 2002, following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan, American troops captured the badly wounded Islamist, who, they claimed, had thrown a grenade that killed Sgt. Chris Speer, a medic with the US special forces. Mr Khadr was shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, where, in 2010, her pleaded guilty to charges that included the murder of Sgt. Speer, and was sentenced to a further eight years in custody.

Almost before the door slammed on Mr Khadr's cell at Gitmo, the usual gang of snowflakes and SJWs in Canada and the USA started demanding his release. He was only a child, they said. He was being tortured, they said. (He later said he confessed just to get out of Guantanamo Bay.) His civil rights were being violated, the Americans said. His Charter rights were being violated, the Canadians said, and he's a Canuck, so shouldn't be in the USA at all. Thus the start of the "Bring Omar home" movement.

After years of litigation and negotiation, Omar Khadr was finally returned to Canada in 2012 and sent to a maximum-security prison. He was grated bail in May of 2015, pending an appeal in the USA of his military commission conviction. The appeal is still pending. Meanwhile, as part of the litigation just referred to, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2010 that Canadian intelligence officials obtained evidence from the poor lad under "oppressive circumstances", such as sleep deprivation, during interrogations at Gitmo in 2003. Worse still, they shared that evidence with American officials. The horror!

Also meanwhile (in 2004) Mr Khadr's lawyers filed a C$20-million lawsuit against the Canadian government, arguing it had violated international law by not protecting its own citizen and, worse yet, conspired with the US in the wrongful imprisonment and abuse of the young Muslim "victim". The "abuse" may have included giving him nothing to read but the Holy Qu'ran and Playboy. Whatever... the Conservative government of Steve Harpoon stoutly resisted the lawsuit, but now that Mr Selfie is in power, things are looking up for the poor oppressed Muslims of Canada and the world. Very much so for Mr Khadr, who will get just over half of the amount claimed in his suit, plus the customary profuse apology.

Amidst this incredible perversion of justice, there is one small ray of sunshine. In 2015, in an American court, Sgt. Speer's widow won an award of $134.2 million for wrongful death. Her lawyers have filed an application in Canada for enforcement of that judgment, as well as an injunction which would divert any money given to Mr Khadr to her and Sgt. Layne Morris, who was blinded by the same grenade.

Mr Khadr, meanwhile, is out of jail, and is reported to be studying to become a nurse. Paying tuition won't be a problem for him, and I expect that on graduation he will do the right thing and volunteer to join the Canadian forces in Iraq, perhaps as a medic. Yeah.

If you find the payout to Canada's newest multi-millionaire offensive, SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION put up by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Over 50,000 disgusted Canucks have done so already (noon today). The Gliberals have a long history of ignoring public opinion because as "progressives", they know what's best. But who knows? Maybe this time.

UPDATED: VIDEO: Niqab ban becomes hot Canuck election issue

On Thursday night, the leaders of Canada's Big Three political parties (plus the Little Two parties -- the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party) had another in what promises to be an enervating series of debates on issues which Canuck voters may care about -- or not -- come October 19th, the date set for a general election.

This debate, conducted entirely in French and aired on the French-language media with translations on some of the English channels, was supposed to cover the everything from soup (economic issues) to nuts (Canada's so-called foreign policy). Most of the two hours was taken up with MM Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau talking over each other, repeating the same talking points viewers had heard 100 times already, with Ms May and M Duceppe getting in the occasional jab.

There was only one surprise, that being the vehemence of the five minutes spent discussing (?) the question, pushed by M Duceppe (the Bloc Head), of whether Muslim women should be forced to remove the niqab -- the head-covering and facial veil worn by the more devout of them -- before taking an oath of citizenship or receiving or giving other government services.

This may seem like a small point, but it's a hot question in Québec, and only less so in TROC (The Rest Of Canada) because the ultra-PC Canuck media refuse to acknowledge that it's a sore point with non-Muslim Canadians right across the country.

The issue came to the fore earlier this month, when the Federal Court of Appeal struck down the government's rule requiring all women to show their face at citizenship ceremonies. See "Canucks try again to ban wearing niqab at citizenship ceremonies" (WWW 19/6/15). To no-one's surprise, the court found the regulation violated Muslim women's freedom of religion, contrary to the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms. The ink was barely dry on the judgment before Mr Harpoon's minions announced there would be an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

And so the issue was joined in the debate, with Ms May and M Trudeau clearly pandering to the Muslim minority, Mr Mulcair doing the same rather tepidly, and MM Duceppe and Harper vying to see who could out-nigger the other, as George Wallace would have put it.

In the post-debate analysis on CBC's "At Issue" segment of the national news, Andrew Coyne, who writes good columns for the National Post, expressed surprise that the election campaign had become so fixated on something that will have zero impact on nearly every single voter, a point made during the debate itself by the Greens' Ms May.

"It’s ridiculous," he said. "It’s not an issue that is germane to the future of this country. It is a trivial issue in the grand scheme of things." That brought a withering response from one of Walt's favourite Canadian pundits, Chantal Hébert, who writes for the Toronto Star. Normally Ms Hébert is cool and unflappable, but she answered Mr. Coyne's point by telling him that it was not a trivial issue to something like 75% of Canadians outside Québec who supported the idea of a ban on the niqab, according to a recent opinion poll.

We have video of the entire "At Issue" segment (running time 15:13), including clips from the debate itself, with voice-over in English. The heated exchange between Ms Hébert and Mr. Coyne starts at 5:45 and ends at 9:50 -- about a minute less than the time spent on the issue in the debate itself.



As for the polls to which Ms. Hébert refers, Maclean's tell us that one, conducted in March by Forum Research, found that 67% of Canadians oppose the wearing of niqabs during citizenship ceremonies. An Ipsos poll found a whopping 88% support for the government’s stance. A Leger survey, commissioned by the Privy Council Office over the winter but not released until last week, tallied similar results: 82% in favour of the no-niqab policy.

The Big Three leaders will appear in another debate this evening, ostensibly on questions of foreign policy. It will be amazing if the niqab issue doesn't arise, less amazing if MM Mulcair and Trudeau, having read the numbers, find ways to alter their views to be more in line with those of their countrymen/women/persons.

Further reading:
"Niqab debate leading to wider discussion on religious, cultural accommodation": Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star.
"The niqab: Trivial politics, or election difference-maker?": Michael Friscolanti in Maclean's.

UPDATE (30/9/15) from Ed.: We're still catching up from Walt's absence over the weekend. Turns out that the afternoon before the debate referred to above, the Harper government released a poll, kept secret until now, showing strong support for banning the niqab at citizen ceremonies. Click here to read the report on CBC News.  

Toronto "public" housing allowed to discriminate by religion, ethnicity, etc

Meet Austin Lewis. He's 21, and disabled by a disease that attacked his spinal cord when he was 8. And he's homeless. He needs to live in a wheelchair-accessible building, and has applied to more than 100 in the Greater Toronto Area, without success.

Mr. Lewis did succeed, a few months ago, in getting himself on the list at a building called the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace, on Finch Avenue West in northwest Toronto. The 16-storey building is subsidized by the taxpayers as part of a programme to encourage religious and other non-profit groups to build affordable housing.

In the USA, if your organization gets public funds for something like a school or hospital or affordable housing, the facility must be open to all members of the public. In the USA, there's no discrimination on the basis of race, colour, "gender preference", religion or anything else.

One might think that in Canada, generally a more socially liberal society than the Excited States, the same rules apply. After all, Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects the same "human rights" as those enjoyed and abused by Americans, eh?

If that's what one thinks, one would be wrong. Austin Lewis found that out last week when a letter arrived at his mother's house telling him that he had been removed from the waiting list at the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace because... wait for it... he is not a follower of the Prophet Mohammed, i.e. a Muslim.

How can this be, Mr. Lewis wonders. "This letter came as a complete shock," he told a Toronto Star reporter. "Why would a government segregate its own building?"

A spokesthingy for the City of Toronto explained that "The City’s mandate policy allows social housing providers to restrict their housing to individuals belonging to an identifiable ethnic or religious group if specific conditions are met." The city provides a subsidy of C$1.7 million ($1.275 million real dollars) for 94 rent-geared-to-income units under an agreement that restricts tenants to "members of the Muslim Jama’at".

But, the city's flak-catcher said, it's not like the Muslims are getting special treatment by being allowed to bar non-Muslims from their building, with its prayer rooms and other "facilities from which others would get no benefit". There are eight such buildings in Toronto, catering to Muslims, Macedonians, Germans, Chinese, Greeks, Hungarians, Lithuanians and "Christian seniors". So that's all right, then.

Final word comes from lawyer Barry Swadron (a classmate of Agent 3), who has extensive experience in disability law. "Here you have a building for Muslims, and normally that would be discriminatory because other religions could not be accommodated there," he told the Toronto Star. But the Ontario Human Rights Code says if it's a special-interests organization -- religious, philanthropic, educational or social -- they can discriminate in that way. It's very unfortunate, but that’s how the law was written."

But what about Austin Lewis? Mr. Swadron explained that, while the intention was to create safe spaces for minority communities, this kind of permissible "positive discrimination" inevitably produces collateral damage. Unfortunately for Mr. Lewis, he's "an unintended casualty of the system."

Mr. Lewis says the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace is the only landlord who's had the courtesty to tell him in writing that he's inadmissible, and wonders how many others have refused his application without bothering to notify him. Seems to me the solution for him is obvious. Don't wait for the politically correct Ontario or Toronto government to change the law to make "public" mean truly public -- open to all. Convert to Islam!

Nobody likes the Charter of Québec Values...except the people!

The proposed Charter of Québec values has rung the bell of the lamestream media and the chattering classes, both in la Belle Province and in TROC (The Rest of Canada). Those calling it "racist", "anti-Muslim", and "unhelpful" -- you know the list of epithets -- include the Federation of Québec School Boards, the association representing the province's health care industry, and even the Québec Bar Association, which says the Charter will certainly be challenged in the courts.

What's really causing those who celebrate diversity to soil their silkies is the possibility that the Parti Québecois -- presently a minority government -- will call a snap election with the Charter (and only that) as the ballot question. Latest polls put the PQ in first place (ahead of the Liberals), with 36% of decided voters likely to back them. If polling day results reflect those numbers, the PQ would be returned with a majority.

Why? Because the real people of Québec -- even in the "culturally diverse" Montréal region -- overwhelmingly support the proposal. On Monday, a Léger poll found that that 60% Québecois back the Charter. Among the crucial francophone voters, that number rises to just short of 70%!

It's real people -- like the Pineault-Caron family, from the Saguenay town of Sacré-Coeur -- who are speaking out against religious and cultural "accommodation", meaning the stealthy Islamization of their heretofore white Christian society. The video of part of their testimony about the upsetting sights and sounds of Islam they suffered during their travels in Morocco and Turkey — and their conclusion that it is "unthinkable" to allow people in such "disguises" to roam around in public in Québec — became a YouTube sensation, registering over 300,000 hits so far.

Some Québecois see the charter as little more than an electoral ploy. The pundits and "progressive thinkers" of the anglophone media accuse the PQ of playing the "politics of division", to get back the francophone vote they lost to the Coalition Avenir Quebec in the last election. If that's the plan, it's working; the Leger poll says support for the CAQ is down 10 points from the 2012 election.

What about a court challenge, if the Charter is enacted? For the liberals and diversity-lovers, the wish will almost certainly be father to the thought and grandfather to court challenges under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Such action would bring the whole issue of diversity and "accommodation" not just to the Supreme Court of Canada (ultimately) but to the attention of the real people in TROC. According to Walt's Canuck agents, there are a great many -- outside of Toronto, the font of all evil -- who would be happy to see a similar law in force all over the Great Not-so-white North.

Further reading on WWW: "What Québec's new Charter of Values will and will not do"

Queer students campaign against Christian law school

Yesterday Walt passed on a report that 2/3 of the self-identified Christians in Notsogreat Britain felt they have become a persecuted minority in their own land. Persecuted, that is, by "aggressive secularists" supported by their own government, headed by "Conservative" Prime Minister David Cameron.

Today we look at Canada, where one would think freedom of speech, freedom of religion and, indeed, freedom of thought, would be guaranteed by the Charter of Rights, thus safe from the predations of political correctness. One would be wrong.

Walt takes you now to Langley, British Columbia, the home of Trinity Western University.

TWU is a small(ish) university compared with behemoths like UBC, but it has a wide range of programmes, offering undergrad and graduate degrees in the humanities, education, even medicine. It would like to start a faculty of law, but its attempt so to do is meeting with opposition from the usual gang of social activitsts and secular humanists.

Why the fuss? It's because Trinity Western University is... wait for it... a "faith-based" institution of higher learning. That right, dear reader. Those people are religious!

The idea of having a law school where students would be taught real ethics and religious ideals is being challenged in a petition by students from eight other Canadian law schools. Their reasoning (if such it can be called) is that TWU's Christian policies discriminate against... wait for it (again)... the LGBT (queer) "community".

The homophiliacs' petition asks the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology [Why do the names of these government departments get longer and more complex every year? Ed.] to reject the accreditation of TWU's proposed law school, claiming parts of the university's student handbook are contrary to the rights of LGBT students, faculty and staff.

Here's the deal. If you want to study or work at TWU, you're asked to sign a Community Covenant Agreement, outlining the university's conduct expectations, and your rights and duties as a member of the institution. OK so far? It's normal, surely, for a school, company, social club, government agency -- any organization -- to have policies and procedures which you must accept, either explicitly or implicitly, if you want to belong.

But... TWU's Community Covenant Agreement contains a clause that requires community members to abstain from "sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman." Shock! Horror!

The handbook says that if a student fails to comply with the agreement after signing it, the university "reserves the right to discipline, dismiss, or refuse a student's re-admission to the University". In other words, if you break the agreement you signed, you exclude yourself from the organization.

But OUTlaw -- a group representing the LGBT gang at the University of Alberta -- doesn't see it that way. A spokesthingy, Christopher Ghesquier, told CBC Radio (natch!) "This discriminatory policy really does not represent Canadian law. I think it definitely does offer a less welcoming environment for LGBT students to attend [TWU]... Despite the fact that the law recognizes same-sex marriages, the school seems not to."

To which Walt says, so what, Chrissy?! You don't have to go to TWU if you don't think you will be welcome there. And you are already going to the University of Alberta law school, eh? So what's it to ya?!

Trinity Western was a little more moderate in its response. Their statement regarding the petition says the agreement being challenged was "rigorously researched and developed" after consultation with legal experts. "While we value and respect differing views, we trust that a faith-based community still has the religious freedom in Canada to maintain its beliefs and participate fully in society."

Walt hopes TWU's trust that Canadian law societies and governments uphold the rights of religious minorities -- such as practising Christians -- is not misplaced. Walt hopes... but will not bet. Lifetime pct, like freedom of religion in our secular society, does not apply.

American gun owners, be warned by the Canadian experience

The Canadian government, like that of Communist China, doesn't trust its citizens to have guns. That's a fact. The only people allowed to have firearms should be the police and the armed forces -- the agents the state uses to control ordinary Canucks. That's the plan.

Walt thanks Agent 17 for drawing our attention to a cautionary commentary by Brian Lilley, which appeared on SunNews back in January. Interestingly, although the link sent by our agent still works, the video itself no longer appears on the SunNews website. Is there something wrong with Ed.'s browser or is the ruthless Canadian "Ministry of Public Safety" trying to silence its critics? Fortunately, at least part of the video made it to YouTube. Here it is.



Agent 17 wanted to know if the story of Bruce Montague's prosecution by the Canadian authorities -- that should be in caps: AUTHORITIES -- is true. Yes, it is. But Mr. Montague is fighting back. Click here to go to his website, featuring details of the case and (more important) an analysis of how his treatment by the AUTHORITIES violates the Canadian Charter of so-called Rights and so-called Freedoms.

But this is nothing new. Back on the late 70s, one of Walt's own agents, kept a legally registered pistol in his office in Canada's so-called Province of Opportunity. Our agent was in the sort of business where it is not unheard of for malefactors and tortfeasors to show up on one's doorstep with booze in their bellies and mayhem in their minds.

That's exactly what happened one warm summer evening. When he heard heavy footfalls on the office stairs, our agent confronted the young punk and, apprehending an altercation, fired a warning shot across said punk's low brow. Guess who got arrested? You got it! Our agent spent a couple of nights in the county bucket and months in pre-trial detention before having several law books thrown at him by a judge who felt that our agent should have called the police, whose "local" office was some 15 miles distant.

Want more? Click here to read a similar story about New Brunswick resident Lawrence Manzer, who was (like our agent) charged with "possession of a weapon dangerous to the public peace". There's a video report too. The title of the webpage is "Here's a reason to be ashamed to be a Canadian".

Dear readers, the argument against turning our countries into police states is old, simple and true. If your government succeeds in making it illegal for law-abiding citizens to have firearms for recreation and self-defence, the only people left in possession of guns will be the Agents of Control and, errr, the criminals to whom the law means nothing.

Murderer pleads "Don't send me back to Jamaica!"

Brendaly "Jenny" Figueroa was murdered about 12 years ago. She was a victim of Canada's liberal immigration policy, and of John McLeod, the Jamaican who killed her in a fit of rage after she threatened to end their short relationship. He stuffed her body in a suitcase and left it at the side of Ontario's highway 401.

In 2001 McLeod was convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to life, with no possibility of parole for 12 years. He became eligible for day parole and is now eligible for full parole.

But does he want it? No! Mr. McLeod wants to stay in jail -- a nice Canadian jail if you please. Why? Because, not being a Canadian citizen but a Jamaican, at the time of his sentencing he was ordered to be deported from Canada immidately on being released from prison.

Now the convicted murderer has filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada, another of those "Charter rights" cases so beloved of victims of every imaginable form of discrimination. And their taxpayer-remunerated lawyers, of course.

Mr. McLeod's claim is that Canada's laws discriminate against foreign nationals by robbing them of a chance for conditional release after they've paid their debt to society. It all depends, he says, on what it means to "complete" a prison sentence.

Under the Immigration and Refugee Act, a foreign national who engages in serious criminality is subject to removal once a prison sentence "is completed", which means "as soon as any form of conditional release is granted."

However, under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, a sentence for a non-citizen is not considered complete until the expiration of every day of the sentence, even if they're on parole before that very last day.

In dismissing McLeod's action, Mr. Justice Donald Rennie of the Federal Court said, "Parliament has the right to prescribe the conditions under which foreign nationals who are convicted in Canada will be removed from Canada.... As the applicant has no right to remain in Canada, he has no right to access Canadian society under terms and conditions that are available to Canadian citizens; hence no Charter issue arises.

"[Deportation] does not deprive him of anything he has not, by his own conduct, already lost," the judge added. While citizens and non-citizens may be treated differently, he opined, it does not equate to discrimination. "Since the applicant has no right to remain in Canada there can be no differential treatment. A Canadian citizen has a right to remain in Canada. Therefore, a foreign national and a [Canadian] national are not [the same.]"

All that may come as a shock to the lawyers, counsellors and other do-gooders who do well out of helping to bogus refugees, asylum-seekers and criminals remain in Canada. They may take some comfort, though, in learning that Mr. McLeod plans to appeal.

Islam, imams and the Canadian Charter of Rights

Walt is still waiting for Christian clerics to say something -- anything -- about the Toronto District School Board's decision to allow Muslim imams to lead Friday prayers in their schools. Bishops and pastors may be silent, but, inevitably, constitutional law experts are starting to cast a few pearls.

Donning the boxing gloves lawyers use to pick flyspecks out of pepper, the University of Toronto's Ed Morgan told parentcentral.ca cases under the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms have said ... you cannot accommodate the desire for prayers or religious instruction in a public school. Something after school, or on weekends, would be fine, he added. So it would seem the Charter operates only during business hours!

Another way around the problem is suggested by Shaikh Yusuf Badat, imam of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto. "I trained students from Lester Pearson Collegiate near our centre in Scarborough to do [run] their own Friday service.... They’ll write sermons about things like honesty and I provide the readings for them from the Qu’ran. There are no hard and fast rules about it having to be led by an imam, and if there are concerns about an outside person coming in, even a Grade 8 student can be trained to deliver a sermon," he said. Of course, he added, it would have to be a male. Of course.

Our last comment today comes from TDSB trustee Gerri Gershon, responding to questions about what "accommodation" is made for Christian students. "The system is set up to accommodate Christian students; Christmas and Easter are already holidays," she said. Ms Gershon is, errr, of the Hebrew faith.