"Justice is Supposed to be Blind"

"I can't forgive them for a lot of the approaches they took to this, and I think numerous officers got unnecessarily injured, I think people from the general public got unnecessarily injured, I think everybody that was involved in this suffered injuries that could have been avoided had they just stuck to their training, stuck to their policies and stuck to the law. You know, the law doesn't discern colour of skin or ethnic background, and it's not supposed to. Justice is supposed to be blind." Karl Walsh, Ontario Provincial Police Association; excerpted from "Helpless", Christie Blatchford

Now there's a run-on sentence for you; fairly indicative of the emotional rawness still in evidence of the anger and pain felt by Ontario Provincial Police officers over their emasculation by OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino. And this is the guy with the hallowed reputation for law enforcement who has been received the nod to run for the Conservative Party of Canada in the next election in the federal riding of Vaughn. Do Ontarians really have such short memories?

Caledonia became an insult to law and order and public civility when the provincial government under Premier Dalton McGuinty and Julian Fantino's meticulous instructions to the law and order brigade that under no circumstances were the militant young aboriginals - who strutted and bragged and threatened and humiliated people in the area - to be bothered, upset, taken into custody. Short of abduction and murder, they could comport themselves as they would. And they did.

The Ontario Provincial Police members were informed unequivocally that the Douglas Creek Estates area were to be seen as the preserve of "First Nations persons", and off limits to them. In fact, if any OPP officers ventured onto the area in pursuit of upholding the laws of the land and holding law-breakers to account, they could expect no back-up from their OPP brethren, and they were forced to extricate themselves as best they could when surrounded by threatening crowds.

"...enforce the law absolutely. We don't stand by and allow violence and that to occur, but at the end of the day, if we can do it in a more strategic way, that's the way to go..." is the message quoted from Julian Fantino, appearing in Helpless. If that mealy-mouthed, non-confrontational, appeasement isn't a blazing impression of double-speak, nothing is. OPP were definitely instructed to stand by and allow violence "and that" to occur; they were constrained from "absolutely" enforcing the law.

Because the cowardly provincial authorities had no wish to tangle with First Nations warriors again. Each time they did so in the past, the guilt syndrome and political correctness slapped them down, through public opinion and the courts of law. Because there is, in reality, one set of laws for all citizens of the province - and another entirely for all aboriginals of the province - who, in any event, disdain provincial laws, claiming bellicosely that their 'nation' has their own laws.

Something like the standoff in France between the police, cowering on the outskirts of the country's notoriously squalid and violence-prone banlieues where authorities dare not tread lest they be cornered, surrounded and another kind of justice meted out. So it is with the First Nations militias whom their own native governing councils cannot control.

In Mr. Fantino's own words, cited in the book: "when officers have either accidentally or otherwise gone on there [Douglas Creek Estates], it's pretty difficult to extricate them once they get in there and they are surrounded and we've got hundreds of people on speed dial that converge on the area." Now that's a concern, isn't it, that warriors will not permit OPP nor anyone else to enter an area they claim to be theirs, but which really is not.

And that they will beckon back-up to appear to intimidate, threaten and worse should any be foolish enough to enter the area and confront them, insisting that the law is meant to be applied equally to everyone, and no one is exempt from civil, lawful behaviour. Except that for the militant aboriginals there's something like a free pass, encouraging their arrogance by default so they live in another world entirely.

Confronting the violence and the unlawful behaviour is interpreted by the province and the OPP as creating a 'disaster', one where full-fledged confrontation on the scale before seen at Oka and Ipperwash seems inevitable - and a repeat of which is fairly unappetizing to the provincial authorities. This is an insane situation which benefits no one, not the aboriginal population nor the rest of society. It does nothing but create adversarial resentment and the potential for further violence.

But this is a completely cowed, intimidated government that has no idea how to begin to solve problems of their own making.