Open and Transparent Government

"For a period of approximately four months between September and December of 2018, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people in the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion."
"Leaving aside job losses ... where they became very clearly inappropriate was when political issues came up like the election in Quebec, like [the current Liberal government] losing the [October federal] election if SNC were to move their headquarters, conversations like that."
"Conversations like the one I had with the Clerk of the Privy Council who invoked the prime minister's name throughout the entirety of the conversation, spoke to me about the prime minister being dug in, spoke to me about his concerns as to what would happen. In my mind those were veiled threats and I took them as such. That is entirely inappropriate."
"At that point [Trudeau] jumped in, stressing that there is an election in Quebec and that 'I am an MP in Quebec -- the member for Papineau'. I was quite taken aback. My response, and I vividly remember this as well, was to ask [Trudeau] a direct question while looking him in the eye. I asked: 'Are you politically interfering with my role, my decision as the attorney general? I would strongly advise against it'. The Prime Minister said, 'No, no, no -- we just need to find a solution."
"He [Finance Minister Morneau] again stressed the need to save jobs and I told him that engagements from his office to mine on SNC [Lavalin] had to stop, that they were inappropriate."
Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal Member of Parliament for Vancouver-Granville, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Vancouver Granville MP Jody Wilson-Raybould participates in the Chinese New Year Parade in Vancouver. Interviews with constituents in her riding following her explosive testimony on Wednesday reveal support, as well as concerns.  (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)

There it is, in black-and-white, no obfuscations, no denials, no pledges of loyalty to a government reeling in disbelief that one of their own would frankly call them out as she did, recalling the details from notes and keen memory of four months of unrelenting harassment and attempts at intimidation to have her change her mind about taking steps to overturn her Public Prosecutor Office's head's decision not to offer SNC-Lavalin the sought-after deferred prosecution, and instead proceed with a criminal trial against the engineering-construction giant on fraud and corruption charges.

"The Prime Minister asks me to help out, to find a solution here for SNC, citing that if there was no [deferred prosecution] there would be many jobs lost and that SNC will move from Montreal." This during a scheduled meeting set up to urgently discuss a completely unrelated matter, which Justin Trudeau kicked off by immediately bringing up the 'more urgent' need to discuss how she, as Minister of Justice could override her decision not to interfere with the director of the Public Prosecution's decision to go to trial. This from a man who consistently claimed he had made no effort to 'direct' his-then Minister of Justice in the matter.

The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Veterans Affairs Minister Jodie Wilson-Raybould attend a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Jan. 14, 2019.

The irony here for SNC-Lavalin is that they had strenuously lobbied the Liberal government at every level of influence to convince the Prime Minister and his Cabinet that Canada badly needed to rethink a law that the previous government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper under the Conservatives brought in to ensure that corporate malfeasance would not go unnoticed in the justice system. The adjustment to the law occurred as a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, brought in on an omnibus finance bill, the better to be unnoticed by Parliament.

That DPA was the work of SNC-Lavalin influencing government with respect to its need. And if all went as planned, Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin would become the first beneficiary of the new exculpatory device which requires that a company plead guilty to the charges against it, pay a fine, pledge to remediate its practices and be permitted to go about its business. Its business includes competing for government contracts worth billions. Without that DPA in their favour, and a trial at which given the evidence of millions in bribes to Libyan government officials they would be found guilty.

Found guilty of the charges brought against them one of the penalties exacted would be a ten-year moratorium on bidding for government contracts; effectively shut out of lucrative contracts at a time when government has pledged to pursue expensive and extensive country-wide infrastructure upgrades. Jody Wilson-Raybould was resolute and determined that justice would be served, irrespective of the situation which made the prime minister, her boss, very uncomfortable for the longevity of his government with a federal election looming.

The Clerk of the Privy Council, the highest-level civil servant whose job was to oversee the civil service and answer directly to the Prime Minister's Office in that regard, a position which is meant to be politically neutral, took it upon himself to lecture and to harass an elected Minister of the Crown in one of the most prestigious and powerful positions of State. When he testified before the same House of Commons Justice committee, he exonerated the prime minister, his staff and himself from any vestige of attempting to force Jody Wilson-Raybould to reverse her decision.

The Clerk, Michael Wernick, took it upon himself to warn the-then Minister of Justice that the Prime Minister was determined to override her decision and it was up to her to enable that to happen. Prime Minister Trudeau's senior adviser, Gerry Butts, since resigned, informed her that the Director of Public Prosecutions Act, separating the prosecution service from the Justice Department (to ensure freedom from undue political pressure) "was a statute passed by Harper", and thus expendable.

The public has now been fully apprised of the background to the firing of Jody Wilson-Raybould from her position as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. Her demotion directly linked to her integrity and refusal to bend to political pressure, to bypass lawful and legal and needful prosecution of criminal acts. Once she had been advised she was removed from the position, and before it even took effect, her deputy minister was advised that her replacement as Minister of Justice would need to be fully briefed on the SNC-Lavalin affair, so that they could move forward on the file....

Adrian Wyld/CP

Jody Wilson-Raybould leaves a justice committee meeting in Ottawa on Feb. 27, 2019.

Canada's Home-Grown ISIL Terrorists

"We need to get ready in case they come back sooner than what we had expected."
"The reason why we’re doing all of this is because any information on any individual that could pose a threat to Canadians, we will investigate fully. But it may take time. We may not be in a position, as each and every one of them comes back to Canada, that we’re at that stage where we can arrest them."
"[The RCMP is] looking at what’s out there, what’s been reported, what’s on social media [trying to determine how to use it as evidence]. What can we do with that information? How much of it do we need to corroborate? All of that aspect is key."
"[There are also] pockets of intelligence [that were under discussion with the Crowns]. Here’s what we have. How much can we push? What does it mean for us in laying charges?. That engagement with PPSC [Public Prosecution Service of Canada] has been ongoing."
"Because some of these folks [women and children of ISIL] may come back and we may not have enough to charge them, or it may not be they need to charge them either, but they will require some social services."
"We take care of our own. Basically, they are Canadians and I think it’s our responsibility."
Deputy Commissioner Gilles Michaud, head, RCMP federal policing branch

Still from video: ISIL Women and children from Bagruz being transported to Kurdish-controlled holding camps

It's not as though Canadian government security agencies haven't been very well aware that some Canadian Muslim citizens have been taken into custody -- protective custody on the part of Islamic State wives and children -- as the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces mop up the last remaining territory held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in the dying days of their dynastic ambitions, a period where the former Islamic Caliphate has shrunk from territory comprising at least a third each of Syria and Iraq, and growing, to its present parlous state of disappearance.

Disappearance only in the sense that the territory Islamic State celebrated as their growing Islamist imperialist caliphate is now defunct. Not that the deathly violent strain of fundamentalist Islam bequeathed to the world by the Prophet Mohammad in the 7th Century as the final rendition of god's omnipresent benevolence for the human race would or could be so readily suppressed. The jihadists held in prisons awaiting repatriation to their countries of origin to be dealt with there as those countries see fit; and the larger majority indigenous to the region, to be dealt with a trifle more expeditiously under their own system of law and justice remain committed to their death cult.

One that they were proud to display in the slick production of videos and magazines celebrating the terrorist exploits in ghoulishly imaginative ways, promoting the horrors of crucifixion, beheadings and any number of ghastly methods of torture preceding death, from drownings to immolations, explosives strapped to victims, or exhibitions of close-range shooting executions. Wholesome sacrifices to Allah as proof of faith; tickets to exaltation and welcome to Paradise as blessed martyrs to the cause. Of course, on the other hand, a few Muslim nations utilize similar means of capital punishment.

These are the psychopathic, soulless, Medieval minds Canada is preparing to receive. And despite the fact that these 'citizens' plotted to illegally leave Canada to join the growing ranks of like-minded cretins who celebrated the brave new world of the caliphate dedicating themselves to all the ritualistic, sadistic, murderous exploits of the group, Canadian authorities staunchly characterize them as Canadians worthy of return. How perfectly sympatico. Accepting their return, but uncertain whether sufficient evidence will be found to appropriately apply justice for the countless slaughtered victims of the caliphate.

As for the women and children to be repatriated, the women who had full knowledge of the desperate straits imposed upon other women, mere Yazidis and their children forced into slavery after having witnessed the butchery of their husbands and sons, placed into the debauched hands of Islamists whom sacred screed justifies having sex slaves and killing wantonly, what kind of moral, just punishment will be meted out to them? Why of course; social services. Canada the good has compassion.

Canada is unprepared for the return of these model citizens, scrambling now in the wake of the SDF taking more Canadians into custody around the last pocket of ISIS territory in northeast Syria, to ensure that the federal police force, the RCMP, shelve the assumption that these monsters were unlikely to come back to Canada. This, despite that the Kurds have awaited patiently action on the part of foreign nations to reclaim their own. It wasn't, in fact, until the United States faulted countries that hadn't moved to repatriate and prosecute their captured ISIS members that Canada roused itself.

Reaching a decision quite unlike that of the United Kingdom whose approach has been to cancel their citizenship. Magic solution ... no citizenship, no return, no worry. Not for Britain, at least. The Kurds can be forgiven for being less sanguine about being left with this wretched dross of humanity. As for Canada whose policy of late until the present was that the government could do nothing because the detainees were in what Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale called a "dangerous and dysfunctional part of the world" where Ottawa had no diplomatic presence, a tactical change took place.

Obviously, this alert Liberal government on the theory that late is better than never, as far as having made plans with respect to the eventual, potential and logical return of Canadian citizens who wore out their role as terrorists with Islamic State, is now rushing -- even as the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in complete disgrace and disarray with internal matters of corruption of the rule of law -- to now chew on this issue. This is the country, not to forget, that endowed Canada's infamous al-Qaeda family's scion Omar Khadr with a $10-million prize for being a Canadian citizen.

So now we have the recently-awakened RCMP preparing for the return of at least a dozen Canadians detained in Syria while Islamic State is in its death throes as a territorial entity. The poison of its ideology not so readily expunged, however. As part of a national strategy now being put in place, police have been detailed to work with prosecutors in preparation of charges and peace bonds against the detainees, the while interacting with 'allies' to manage their return to Canada.

  

The RCMP’s National Security Joint Operations Centre is the fulcrum of the returnee plan, sharing information on Islamists with other federal departments and international allies. Passports of known foreign fighters have been cancelled, so to process their return to Canada they must apply for replacements through a Canadian diplomatic post — a system that will serve to alert the RCMP to their identity and whereabouts, to enable them to direct the return of these Canadian citizens who are the scum of the Earth.

Once released by the Kurds on instruction from Canada, the returnees are likely to cross into Turkey, a reversal of their original entry to Syria. That has resulted in the RCMP negotiating with Turkish authorities to permit the detainees transit through to Canada rather than placing them on trial in Turkish courts. As well, the RCMP has recommended that Turkey not question these Canadians about their Islamic State roles or search their electronic devices, since that might taint evidence required to successfully prosecute them in Canada.

Aha, there we have it! The RCMP is depending on Islamist terrorists who happen also to be Canadian citizens to bring along with them on their return to Canada ample evidence in their possession to enable Canadian authorities to bring them to justice. Typically Canadian expectation. The very fact Canadian authorities believe that these devotees of mayhem and murder are stupid enough to bring along self-incriminating evidence leads one to question the credulity of the RCMP. On the other hand -- they could be right!

The government’s Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence is supposed to support the “disengagement of extremist travellers, and their families, from violent extremist ideologies.”

 

Canadian Diplomats Suing Their Government

"Throughout the crisis, Canada downplayed the seriousness of the situation, hoarded and concealed critical health and safety information, and gave false, misleading and incomplete information to diplomatic staff."
"[Global Affairs] actively interfered with the plaintiffs' attempts to receive proper health care, including going so far as instructing hospitals to stop testing and treating them."
"Despite knowing of the risks of Havana Syndrome early on, Canada continued to put its diplomats and their families in harm's way by sending them to Havana and requiring them to stay there despite becoming aware of the high and growing risk that they would sustain the brain injuries associated with Havana Syndrome."
Statement of Claim, $28-Million Lawsuit

"We knew there was something [happening] but we just couldn't figure out what was going on. Living in Cuba [as diplomatic staff] we understood that our houses were bugged."
"It just hit me, 'Holy crap, this [symptoms such as nausea, headaches, nosebleeds, hearing and eye problems from an unknown source] is going on in my house'."
"At the low point, I thought I was going to throw up. I was nauseous like you wouldn't believe. I don't know whether I went back to sleep or passed out."
Diplomat Allan (names withheld)

"My belief 21 months later is that decisions were made that simply did not prioritize us, not our health, not our safety and not that of our families."
"I am angry, yes. I am disappointed and I am sad. I am sad because there is no justification for not having considered the personal and lifelong impact this was going to have on us."
Diplomat Baker (generic names used for anonymity)

A view of the Canadian Embassy in Havana, Cuba, on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009. (Franklin Reyes/Associated Press)

Five Canadian diplomats assigned to posts in Cuba, and 14 of their family members have filed a law suit against the federal government resulting from the mysterious illness they suffered while posted to Cuba and living in Havana. According to the suit the Canadian government which is responsible for the well-being of all Canadians and in particular their staff abroad, failed to inform, protect, treat and support them at a time of need.

Canadian families in Havana, the lawsuit states, "have been targeted and injured, suffering severe and traumatic harm by means that are not clear but may be some type of sonic or microwave weapon". And nor have Canadians been the sole targets. In fact American diplomats have been exposed and have suffered identical symptoms and injuries in their posting to Cuba. The affliction they all suffer from is now known as Havana Syndrome.

The government of Cuba claims to be just as mystified regarding the source of the syndrome as the U.S. and Canadians. Co-operation between all three governments to find the source of the problem has been welcomed, but no answers to the questions have resulted. The United States decided to dramatically reduce the number of diplomatic staff until such time as the matter can be more fully understood. It took Canada quite a while longer to decide not to permit family members to accompany diplomatic staff assigned to Cuba to accompany them.

Two years ago healthy diplomatic staff and their family members were beginning to experience peculiar symptoms; nosebleeds, headaches that appeared to have no explanation. Excruciating headaches would afflict them upon waking in the morning followed by nausea and problems with vision. The Allen family received no warning or information from the embassy or from Global Affairs, but a neighbouring U.S. diplomat who knew of the problem and whose own experience echoed that of the Allens, disclosed the situation to him.

Their feelings of fear, extreme irritability, nausea, headaches, nosebleeds had an unknown cause, but the situation was known to those who had earlier gone through the trauma. At the point when Allen was informed he was also told that a dozen Americans had been evacuated from Havana once it was ascertained that something strange was causing them to suffer those headaches, nosebleeds, hearing and eye problems. The Americans too were sworn to secrecy about the issue.

Eventually the Allen family was sent to the University of Miami for testing. A doctor there had examined about twenty Americans with similar symptoms, who had also been based in Havana. He diagnosed all four members of the Allen family with traumatic brain injuries similar to symptoms from concussions, recommending the children not return to Cuba: "They need to be away from Cuba for awhile".

Yet according to the lawsuit the Canadian embassy refused to send the Allen children back to Canada. The very fact that the Canadian diplomatic staff who knew about the situation were ordered to be silent about the issue, not to discuss anything with other staff newly arrived, knowing nothing of what was transpiring, did not impress these newly-diagnosed Canadians very positively.

Another diplomatic family, Diplomat Davies, wife and two young children were experiencing strange things in their house in Havana in the spring and summer of 2017 where the young daughter was increasingly unable to concentrate at school, suffering from nausea, tinnitus, sensitivity to light, visual impairment and sudden nosebleeds. Mrs. Davies lost her sense of balance, reported hearing high-pitched sounds. "I no longer knew where was up and where was down", she informed her husband after a strange fall.

She was diagnosed with damage to her vestibular system; parts of the inner ear and brain that process sensory information, was hypersensitive to light and noise, suffered from headaches, dizziness and muscle twitching. By all these accounts it is manifest that the government of Canada has failed in its obligation to its employees, to keep them safe from harm and to respond to their needs. The diplomats and their families are now undergoing tests at Dalhousie University's Brain Repair Centre.

The research and tests there have pointed out leakages in their blood brain barriers consistent with symptoms of concussions. When Global Affairs appeared to hesitate about the need to ensure that these people were given swift medical attention, several of the families travelled to University of Pennsylvania after officials there had offered to assess and treat Canadians, but the offer was turned down by the federal government.

All sound reasons to demand attention and remedial action, even if it was recognized that such would only be forthcoming through the compelling action of a lawsuit.

Celebrating A Generation Milestone of Islamic Republic of Iran Confronting the Corrupt and Unworthy World Order

"The depiction of him [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false."
"Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on non-violent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country."
Richard Falk, professor of international law, Princeton University, The New York Times, 1979

Speaking at a Washington, D.C. press conference, former UN Palestine Rapporteur Richard Falk lashed out at UN Watch for “damaging my reputation,” “stirring up trouble” for Falk and his colleagues, and “weakening” UN efforts to “document Israeli violations of international law.”

Infallible judgement from emeritus professor of international law at one of America's most prestigious elite universities. At a time when the Islamic Revolution in Iran emboldened university students in Tehran to lay siege to the U.S. Embassy and to hold American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days in a stand-off that then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter -- a conciliator of Middle East Arab and Muslim complaints over the presence of the State of Israel, supportive of the violence expressed by Palestinian terrorists whom he equated as struggling against Israeli 'apartheid' -- was powerless to conclude.

The Islamic Revolution made its debut performance on the world stage, in effect, by holding the most powerful nation in the world hostage to its ire over 'U.S. interference' in Islamic affairs of state. Notwithstanding that most Islamic countries depended on the United States to shield them from the consequences of their own ill-judged actions, much less the traditional hostilities they exerted in confronting one another through the paranoid lens of tribal and sectarian enmities.

Iranian students crowd the U.S. Embassy in Tehran (November 4 1979)

Richard Falk, infamously, was appointed United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories where he distinguished himself by conspicuously demonstrating an outright hatred and contempt for the State of Israel, damning it at every turn for the 'suppression' of Palestinian rights and the 'occupation' over Palestinian territory:
"The best prospect for realizing Palestinian self-determination now is by way of pressures exerted through grassroots mobilization".
"We must strengthen the global solidarity movement, which includes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) initiative in relation to businesses that profit from the settlements, as well as other forms of non-violent resistance."
"Third party Member States of the United Nations also have an important responsibility to ensure they are not complicit in human rights violations in Occupied Palestine."

Under his tenure the UN HRC issued countless sanctions against Israel for assumed human rights abuses, charging it with violations of basic human rights targeting Palestinians. No neutrality of judgement or balance in viewing the commission of violence against Israel, much less condemnation of Palestinian recruitment of future martyrs by a PA curriculum for school-age children groomed to hate Israel and Jews and inculcate in them a wish for martyrdom, much less the salaries paid to those committing atrocities against Israeli citizens and honours bestowed upon them.

So how did his prediction and smug confidence in the capabilities and direction and future of the Islamic Republic of Iran turn out? Given this man's orientation, very nicely. That the Ayatollahs preferred to slap down the hand of accommodation proffered by another American president, Barack Obama, was only Iran informing the U.S. it was aware of its secret agenda to elevate Israeli interests over those of the rightful inheritors of Jerusalem, the ancient city sacred to Islam, not Judaism. They certainly read Obama wrong.

From the Republic's spectacular introduction of itself to the world at large to the succeeding years when Britain authorized a security detail to protect Salman Rushdie from the fatwa issued for his life, forfeit for insulting the Prophet Mohammad, to the 1980s when Iran's Lebanese Hezbollah militia was authorized to launch attacks internationally against Jewish targets and the mass slaughter of thousands of political prisoners in Iran, the Ayatollahs made their mark on Persian annals of its civilized heritage.

Assassinations and bombings of international targets though clandestinely pursued, were linked by intelligence agencies to their source; gifts from Tehran to Buenos Aires and Berlin, for starters. A different kind of student protest in 1999 was brutally suppressed, followed by the green revolutionaries hoping to thwart the Republic's plans to rule and ruin the nation indefinitely. And then came the covert activities to acquire suspect nuclear facilities.

And who wants to recall Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration in the United Nations that the shining light of the Hidden Mahdi enveloped him as he addressed the General Assembly? Or that even there in that hallowed hall of world peace, unification and equality, he promised that Iran would destroy the presence of the State of Israel, to barely a murmur of dissent, more than equalling the earlier dated presence of Yasser Arafat, dove in one hand, pistol in the other.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a ceremony celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Azadi Square, Tehran, on February 11, 2019.

Yet eventually, the world saw and acclaimed the election of a 'moderate' President of Iran when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who in an earlier manifestation as an elite follower of Ayatollah Khomeini successfully practised the art of deceit and boasted of it afterward, presenting Iran's aspirations as being wholly immersed in peaceful pursuits despite all indications to the contrary, then led his country to another victory with the implementation of the nuclear agreement, allowing the country to get on with its intercontinental ballistic missiles program, its nuclear program less prominently.

That Iran dedicated its Revolutionary Presidential Guard al-Quds division to aid and support to the Alawite Shia Syrian regime enabling the destruction of a half-million Syrian lives and the displacement of millions of its Sunni citizens suited Shiite Iran very well indeed, dispatching Hezbollah to the conflict zones and later Shiite militias looking for blood to spill. And then came the Yemeni Shiite-brand Houthis to destabilize Yemen and bring it firmly alongside Syria, Lebanon and oddly enough Qatar, into the Iranian orbit.

Most certainly, the Islamic Revolution has earned its notorious place as a threat to security in the Middle East, having aligned itself with Russia and Turkey, all pleased to be seen as a  triumvirate of solid resistance against the West and its rapacious interests in despoiling the Middle East of its inestimable resources which they would be far more adept at doing in a far more collegial spirit of co-operation. For the time being.

'Death to America' protesters carry life-sized cardboard images of iconic revolutionary figures, including Supreme Leader Rouhallah Khomeini.

Canada-China Relations

"Establishing fake civil society NGOs is an established modus operandi of the United Front [Works Department, a secretive arm of the Chinese Communist Party whose purpose is to convince ethnic Chinese groups overseas to collaborate in supporting the government of China]."
Charles Burton, professor, Brock University, former Canadian diplomat in Beijing

"[The group -- Vancouver-based United Association of Women and Children -- seems to have] all the hallmarks [of a front organization to further Beijing's interests]."
"All but a tiny handful of Canadians of Chinese heritage are here [in Canada as immigrants] because they do not wish to be ruled or controlled by the CCP."
Jonathan Manthorpe, author, Claws of the Panda

"I think China has lots of freedom of speech. The Chinese media in China, they have very much freedom, to talk and to criticize and to make suggestions."
"The Chinese people would like to keep the good relationship to expand the business with Canada."
"But this matter [the arrest and extradition of  Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou] will damage that because people understand Canada is doing something for the benefit of America."
Chinese-Canadian lawyer Hong Guo, Vancouver

A Chinese security official stands guard in front of the Canadian embassy in Beijing, China, Jan. 15 2019.
EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY

In the news lately there has been notice of Chinese students studying in Canadian universities attempting to demoralize, harass and complain about Canadians of Uyghur and Tibetan heritage speaking on Canadian university campuses about their ethnic groups' trials and tribulations with the Chinese Peoples Republic, calling on the universities to see that such talks are not permitted since they are insulting to China's sterling reputation on human rights.

Now, news of another group representing Chinese immigrants to Canada invested in pursuing China's interests within Canadian politics and the rule of law has come to the attention of the news media. Chinese groups working surreptitiously to influence Canadian politics, raising funds for Liberal governments, federal and provincial, posing for photographs with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while being connected to the Chinese political hierarchy.

Following Huawei's Meng Wanzhou's detention by Canadian authorities awaiting extradition to the U.S. on fraud charges, two Canadians were detained while doing business in China and charged with plotting against China; both are being held in prison, subjected to torture and interrogation while another Canadian whose prison sentence for smuggling drugs was updated to capital punishment for his crime, have the two countries at diplomatic loggerheads.

And into the fray enters Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. Even while one of their own diplomatic employees on temporary leave, Michael Kovrig languishes in a Chinese prison along with businessman Michael Spavor, both randomly picked up and charged as an obvious reciprocal challenge to Canada to release Ms. Wanzhou, here is the director-general of the north Asia bureau pitching for the Canada-China Scholarship Exchange Program at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa.

"My department is proud to support the CCSEP and is eager to see a broader representation of Canadians from across the country at the university and college level [travel to China to study there]."
"[Strong] people-to-people connections have been the bedrock of our dynamic bilateral relationship [ and both countries view] education co-operation [as a strategic priority]."
"And that priority is easy to see. China is Canada's most important source of international students with more than 140,000 Chinese students on campuses of Canadian institutions."

"It sends the message to the Chinese that, no matter what we say, we want the relationship to continue as if nothing had happened. I simply can't see us holding such an event with any other country if they were holding two of our citizens hostage."
"[Canada's continued engagement with China on the education exchange is indicative of its] national myopia [relating to the People's Republic]."
David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to China

"These exchanges provide international academic experience to both Canadian and Chinese students and researchers -- and foster co-operation between our two countries."
"[Canada continues to call for the release of Kovrig and Spavor after their arbitrary detentions, but relations benefit from student exchanges]."
Adam Austen, spokesman, Foreign Affairs

And take note: even while the government of Canada continues to promote the exchange program where Canadian colleges and universities sweep up enormous tuition fees, the travel advisory for Canadians contemplating travel to China through the Government of Canada website reads:

China - Exercise a high degree of caution
Exercise a high degree of caution in China due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws; risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws; Laws and culture - death penalty, penalties for drug-related offences

Exercise a high degree of caution
There are identifiable safety and security concerns or the safety and security situation could change with little notice. You should exercise a high degree of caution at all times, monitor local media and follow the instructions of local authorities.

Michael Kovrig (left) and Michael Spavor, the two Canadians detained in China, are shown in these 2018 images taken from video. Canadian diplomats have been granted consular access to one of two Canadians detained in China.  THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP

A Legal Quagmire : Only In Canada

"The law is clear. Sentencing judges must pay particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders."
"A sentencing judge ... did not consider the impact of broad historical events and the systemic factors that played a part in the appellant's makeup."
"The diminished culpability of the appellant warranted a departure from the overriding principles of denunciation and deterrence to accommodate the principle of rehabilitation and a restorative justice plan."
"The jointly proposed sentence was sufficient in the circumstances, and was focused on a rehabilitative and restorative sentence for the appellant, and did not fail the public interest test."
Prince Edward Island Appeal Court finding

The Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Gladue decision said judges must take note of systemic or background factors when determining a sentence for Indigenous offenders in order to address their “serious overrepresentation’’ in prison.  (Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

A provincial court justice in Prince Edward Island, faced with a joint Crown-defence submission that would have enabled a 20-year-old man of Cree background to avoid prison time as penalty for possession of cannabis for the purpose of trafficking -- found with 15 grams at Charlottetown Rural High School -- made the decision not to consider the Aboriginal heritage of the man when she arrived at her decision of an intermittent sentence of 90 days in prison.

Her reasoning was that the man, Nicholas George Nash McInnis, removed from his biological parents at birth, placed in the care of Manitoba Child and Family Services and adopted by a non-Indigenous couple originally from Prince Edward Island when he was seven months old, made the fact that he was Aboriginal irrelevant since he was not raised in an Indigenous Canadian environment, having had little exposure to his heritage and culture, raised by John and Brenda McInnis.

He had not been raised by his biological mother who lived in Manitoba. On appeal, the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal felt the judge had been in error, to refuse accepting systemic factors that would serve under the law to reduce the criminal culpability of the young man on the charges before her. In 1999 the Supreme Court of Canada brought in its Gladue report which mandated that in sentencing an Aboriginal Canadian account must be taken of his ancestry and culture.

Judges must take care to note systemic or background factors during the determination of a sentence for offenders of Indigenous backgrounds -- for the purpose of recognizing and addressing their "serious over-representation" in Canadian prisons. As far as the appeal court was concerned, the Gladue report was incorrectly not applied to Nicholas McInnis, as a summary of his circumstances to be presented to court at sentencing.

This lapse was an error of judgement in failing to provide him with a degree of relief from guilt, that "sufficiently illustrated the link between (his) Aboriginal heritage and the reason for a reduction of his moral blameworthiness in relation to the offence". The report outlined some factors such as his attempt at suicide at age 17, his diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, his dislocation from Aboriginal people and consequent struggle with cultural identity, and his experience of racism, bullying and racial profiling.

The joint recommended sentence of two years' probation was therefore imposed.

An appeal court has found that a judge mistakenly failed to consider the Cree background of a drug trafficker who had been taken from his Manitoba parents as an infant and raised by a non-Aboriginal family on Prince Edward Island.  File Photo

The entire case reflecting a circuitous puzzle of this young man's journey to unfortunate life choices. To begin with it is clear enough that child welfare authorities in Manitoba removed the child at birth from his parents for a reason; drug dependency that physiologically impacted the baby that matured into this young man who, separated by concern over his welfare from his parents, saw him return full circle to a social culture of utter dysfunction despite his innoculation by upbringing in another culture.

There are many physically identifiable ethnic groups that suffer discrimination, whose children are subject in their formative years to alienation from mass society, subjected to racial profiling, the knowledge of their ethnic group's struggle to make their place in a society that preferred to disadvantage  them, and living under the burden of a historical mass atrocity that meant to exterminate them entirely through a concerted, planned and well executed genocide.

Their offspring do not necessarily turn in volumes far in excess of their relative numbers in society, to crime. And nor are those that do, excused by their own society, much less given pardonable assists by the greater society of nations who view them as incapable of fending for themselves, without the pitying assistance of those that can.

The decision added: "A well-informed member of the public, armed with the knowledge of all of the circumstances of the offence and offender, as well as the systemic factors related to Gladue considerations, would not conclude the joint submission represented a breakdown of the effective operation of the criminal justice system."

Goodness, what a grand, sweeping statement.... Equality of outcome under the law?

A Governmental Scandal Swallowing Justin Trudeau

"It is my conclusion and my assertion based on all the information that I have that there was no inappropriate pressure on the Minister of Justice in this matter."
"I conveyed to her [former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould] that a lot of her colleagues and the prime minister were quite anxious about what they were hearing and reading in the business press about the future of the company [SNC Lavalin, Quebec-based engineering giant], the options that were being openly discussed in the business press about the company moving or closing."
"So I can tell you with complete assurance that my view of those conversations is that they were within the boundaries of what's lawful and appropriate; I was informing the minister of context."
"She may have another view of the conversation, but that's something that the ethics commissioner could sort out."
"I am here to say to you that The Globe and Mail article [that first raised the alert over political interference in Canada's justice system] contains errors, unfounded speculation, and in some cases is simply defamatory."
"I worry about the rising tides of incitements to violence when people use terms like 'treason' and traitor' in open discourse. These are the words that lead to assassination."
Michael Wernick, Clerk of the Privy Council

Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould attend a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

The Quebec-based engineering and construction company SNC-Lavalin Inc. with its global reach employing an estimated 50,000 workers internationally and just under ten thousand throughout Canada, has been growing its business exponentially, with the aid of millions it has paid out in bribes to foreign authorities to enable it to win contracts abroad. Quebec itself has a wholly-deserved-and-earned reputation for graft and criminal proceedings in its own construction projects; this fast-and-loose business atmosphere seems congenital.

SNC-Lavalin is facing a trial it would much rather not be involved in, since the evidence available will assuredly ensure that it will be found guilty of criminal offences under Canada's laws penalizing Canadian corporations that bribe foreign officials. Should it indeed be found guilty, under that law which will exact a financial penalty, the other, far more injurious penalty to the company will be shutting it out of the privilege of bidding for government contracts within Canada for a decade.

Executives with the company undertook to lobby the prime minister's office and any other Members of Parliament that could be useful to their case of avoiding trial; no fewer than 50 high-level lobbying meetings took place. The company lobbied for an act of Parliament to bring in a dispute resolution, effectively a remediation agreement that would allow the company to evade trial, plead guilty, pay a fine and promise to reform its corrupt business practices.

That convention, otherwise called a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), was tucked into an omnibus economic bill presented to Parliament, but never identified much less debated, and was approved along with the complex add-on bill. Leading SNC-Lavalin to believe they were 'home-free'. But the Public Prosecution Service informed them that a trial was set to proceed nonetheless. The-then Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould refused to intervene, preferring for justice to take its course.

Despite which, she was pressured on a number of occasions by the prime minister's chief adviser, Gerry Butts, the prime minister himself, and eventually the Clerk of the Privy Council, a civil servant who had reached the pinnacle of civil service as head of the entire civil service, a non-elected official taking it upon himself to lecture an elected Member of Parliament and one of the most senior of the government's Cabinet Ministers. A man who spoke, astoundingly, of the danger of 'assassination'.

The DPA is clearly not meant to be utilized as a get-out-of-jail-free passport to any company which, like SNC-Lavalin has engaged in truly criminally egregious business practices that embroiled their top executives in handing out millions in bribes to foreign movers-and-shakers for lucrative contracts. In any event, one of the issues that the DPA warns it cannot be used for, is the protection of jobs. In that the issue of supporting employment is a non-starter in evaluating who may qualify for a DPA.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, under questioning by the official opposition and other political parties, much less journalists, continues to engage in circumlocution rather than respond directly to the questions put to him, questions such as why it was that he chose to yank a Minister of Justice whom he assured a decision on the matter was hers to make, out of the ministry and given instead a relatively minor ministry of Veterans Affairs. 

The timeline of meetings that took place between himself, the former Attorney General, his principal secretary Mr. Butts, (now resigned, falling on his sword as Trudeau's confidant and chief adviser; his Eminence Grise), and the Clerk of the Privy Council and the pressure placed on the Attorney General speak volumes of the government's desire to avoid a trial for an influential Quebec company at a time when a federal election looms close on the horizon, and Quebec votes are in danger of wavering should SNC-Lavalin face a guilty verdict.

The Prime Minister, his confidant Mr. Butts and Canada's senior civil servant all stressed the potential loss of thousands of jobs should SNC-Lavalin go under. They're talking about a possible 10,000 jobs nation-wide. On the other hand, Justin Trudeau's complete disinterest in building badly needed pipelines to ship Alberta oil to foreign destinations, much less to Eastern Canada to replace Saudi oil imports has resulted in a shutdown of investment and the loss of an estimated 100,000 jobs in the oil industry in Western Canada.

A government is meant to unify a country in a common purpose. Where's the justice?

SNC posted gloomy quarterly earnings that showed the company lost $1.6 billion in the past three months. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters)

"This is a crisis that has become all about Justin Trudeau. He has badly mishandled the affair from the beginning, driving one of his most important cabinet appointments into a rebellion over who is to be believed."
"He has undermined his oft-repeated claims of devotion to a feminist agenda and Indigenous reconciliation. He is seeking to control the damage via a wall of silence that belies his pledge of an open and transparent administration. He is forcing members of his caucus to choose sides, putting their fear of public fallout against the words of a colleague whose job was to protect and follow the law."
"And he has yet to answer why he demoted Wilson-Raybould from her job after she stood up to him. If not as punishment, then why? And if it was indeed punishment, what does that say about Justin Trudeau, his respect for women, and all the talk of higher principles we've had from this government?"
Kelly McParland, journalist, National Post

'Our employees are being used as the puck in a political hockey game,' Neil Bruce says   
Neil Bruce has been CEO of SNC Lavalin since 2015. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)

Canada's Porous, Casual Immigration and Visa System

"It's reliving a nightmare that I went through at that particular time. I was forced to step down from cabinet [as a federal Member of Parliament in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2005]."
"I had to clear my name ... It was pretty sad."
Judy Sgro, former Minister of Immigration

"It's about, what, 15 years later and he's here? Wow."
"Somebody must have made a significant representation if in fact Harjit Singh is here."
Joe Volpe, former Liberal cabinet minister assigned to Immigration 

"This would require ministerial intervention to bring him [Singh] back under the circumstances."
"A deportation order, the circumstances of the deportation order; red flags everywhere."
"It would have to be a decision at the highest level."
Richard Boraks, immigration lawyer

Judy Sgro in 2002. Rod McIver/Ottawa Citizen/Postmedia

"Public interest in the integrity of the immigration system clearly favours his [Harjit Singh's] removal at the earliest opportunity", a judge stated once the last of many legal appeals had been exhausted, and in 2005 Canadian border officials ushered Mr. Singh off Canadian soil -- an immigrant with permanent resident status in Canada, but one who had outlasted the patience of authorities through his various commissions of criminal acts -- sending him back to India, via a long plane journey.

He had been a pizza shop owner located in Brampton, Ontario who was found liable for credit card fraud, suspected of people-smuggling and was accused by police of threatening relatives of witnesses in his fraud case. While in prison after he failed to attend a pre-removal hearing, Harjit Singh, then 54, filed an affidavit accusing the Immigration Minister Judy Sgro of reneging on a deal she had agreed upon, to stop his deportation order in exchange for free pizzas from his shop.

He insisted she had exerted improper influence on his removal from Canada, that her verbal agreement to accept his pizza bribe and offer of help in her reelection campaign was reneged upon. The Minister launched a $750,000 libel suit against the man, but withdrew it once he admitted his accusations to be false. And though she had been cleared of wrongdoing she made the decision to step away from her cabinet post. Now she is furious that the man whom she claimed ruined her political career has returned to Canada. And she wants answers.

The current Minister of Immigration in the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, Ahmed Hussen has stated through an intermediary in his office that no comment was available, in recognition of privacy rules. That same statement was also issued by spokesmen for Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada, under Minister Hussen. It seems that another Member of Parliament, Liberal Raj Grewal who had left the Liberal caucus in disgrace after admitting to a gambling debt of millions of dollars, had written a "routine" letter in support of Singh's visa request.

Arrived in Canada in 1988 on a visitor visa, Singh overstayed, asking for refugee status for himself, his wife and their three children. He was refused, but the three children were later granted that status, their father ordered deported, then over a decade of legal battles ensued. It came to the attention of Canadian authorities that Harjit Singh had been convicted in India of passport fraud after he had been granted permanent resident status on "humanitarian and compassionate grounds", once again revoked.

Singh along with his children was charged with credit card fraud in Canada, the charges stayed when news reached authorities of death threats issued against relatives of prosecution witnesses living in India. Which didn't stop three Canadian banks from launching a civil lawsuit over the fraud charges where the four family members were found liable; Harjit Singh the "guiding force" behind the scheme where the banks were defrauded of $1 million through credit card "skimming" of magnetic stripes.

While it isn't known whether the current Minister of Immigration was aware of the background to this man's previous residence in Canada, Mr. Volpe, who succeeded Ms. Sgro in the ministerial post stated that at the time he was minister he would have been alert to such a visa application. Mr. Singh's son Parminder Singh is not thrilled that his father is catching attention once again in Canada. "It happened a decade and a half ago. You're trying to revive something", he accused investigative journalists' enquiries.

What!!!! Perish the Thought ... Corruption in Canada?!

"I make sure we get a signed invoice [for bribery pay-offs]."
"And payment is always in the form of a cheque, not cash, so we can claim it on our income tax!"
Bernard Lamarre, former head of Lavlin Inc., Quebec

"Given the size of Canada's economy and its high-risk industries, the Working Group recommends Canada review its law implementing the Convention [Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act] and its approach to enforcement to determine why it has only had one conviction [of illegal bribery of foreign officials] to date."
OECD Working Group on Bribery, 2011

"Deferred prosecution agreements [DPAs] and similar alternative-enforcement mechanisms act as powerful incentives for firms to disclose ethics breaches and co-operate with authorities -- co-operation that leads to higher levels of enforcement."
John Manley, 2015 CEO Canadian Council of Chief Executives; former Liberal deputy prime minister

In 2006 Canada had a Conservative-led government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a government that prosecuted companies that based their growth on bribing foreign officials to obtain contracts abroad. This was a change from former Liberal-led governments that turned a blind eye to bribes that resulted in exports being facilitated. When Canada had a Liberal government and Jean Chretien -- later a three-term majority Liberal Prime Minister: 1993 - 2003 -- was trade minister in the 1970s his attitude was that overseas sales shouldn't be held up by irrelevant details such as bribes.

It is why this well-seasoned Liberal politician took many trade missions to China during his prime ministerial years, forging contacts with influential Chinese authorities and politicians in the Communist government, eager and willing to overlook the repressive regime where corruption reigned as supreme as its human rights failures. As soon as the Liberals lost government as a popular electoral base crumbled under the weight of a vast corruption scandal, Mr. Chretien signed on as an influential senior member of a prestigious Canadian law firm to lend his practical expertise in leading trade missions to China.

Canada passed its Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act in 1998 as it had little other choice when an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development convention characterized bribery for what it is, an illegal, corrupt practise -- demanding all its members crack down to ensure its business interests complied with what became an OECD-wide anti-corruption cleansing initiative. As a member, Canada had little option but to join in enacting such a law, though the legislation was largely ignored in Canada.

Canada was later named and castigated as one of the developed world nations most tolerant of corruption in a 2009 Transparency International study which found that Canada undertook "little or no enforcement" of anti-bribery legislation, placing Canada on record as being similar in that regard to countries like Greece, Slovenia, South Africa and Turkey in their casual disregard for corrupt business practises.

Canada was further distinguished when a 2011 review undertaken by the OECD Working Group on Bribery faulted the lax enforcement of anti-corruption laws. When 2008 rolled around under the Conservative minority government, that oblivious attitude to internal corruption came to an abrupt halt as the RCMP created its International Anti-Corruption Unit which led to charges against SNC-Lavalin, Canada's largest engineering and construction company with worldwide holdings, and well recognized for its corrupt business practices.

Once a majority Conservative government was returned in 2011 the government increased its anti-corruption focus through its Integrity Framework, automatically barring companies convicted of criminal offences from accessing contracts with the federal government for a decade. SNC-Lavalin, the Quebec-based construction giant, now at the centre of a government scandal where the current Liberal-led government of Justin Trudeau has been accused of attempting to give it an "out of jail free" pass, heavily dependent on government contracts is a case in point.

Its corrupt practices saw its opportunities for World Bank contracts dried up for the engineering company as penalty for its corrupt practices after it was convicted of a criminal offence. The current Liberal government has invested itself in exonerating the company irrespective of its record of criminality, set on reducing the threat that the Integrated Framework represents for its future and the employment of thousands of Quebec-based employees, where the Liberal government depends on votes, alert to the potential of the October federal election becoming a Liberal=routing exercise.

To that end, they were extremely receptive to a legalized plea bargain where a company and its executives, under a DPA -- deferred prosecution agreement -- could promise not to further engage in corrupt practices, and to pay a compensatory fine, then get on with business as usual, spared a trial and a resulting criminal record that would bar them from bidding on lucrative government contracts for a ruinous ten-year period. SNC-Lavalin lobbied the government robustly to enact a DPA and succeeded, hoping to be spared an upcoming trial for bribery.

However, the federal Criminal Prosecution authority declined to offer the company a deferred prosecution agreement, leading the executive branch of government to make an effort to intervene through pressuring the Minister of Justice to overturn the decision of the Prosecution authority and it all blew up into a scandal of what can only be termed typical Liberal proportions. In fact, DPAs have the effect of decriminalizing bribery and allied corrupt practices, enabling bribes to continue to be viewed as a cost of doing business.

The previous, Conservative government refused to enact legislation for DPAs, favouring traditional prosecutorial practices to result from corporate crimes. Once the Liberals ascended to government in the 2015 federal election, two months passed and an administrative agreement permitting SNC-Lavalin to continue winning government construction contracts proceeded, despite criminal charges pending against its executives.

With a change of government, where the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau cheerfully pronouncing to the world at large "Canada is Back!", lobbying and political considerations in place of operations through the rule of law have taken centre stage, where the bribery of foreign officials is back on track. Business at any cost at the service of a government that touted its determination to run a transparent, unimpeachable style of government where integrity would be manifest.

What's That? Dungeon Them, Throw Away The Key?!!

"No, I don't regret it [enlisting as a conscript with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant]. I was asked the same thing by my interrogators, and I told them the same thing."
"He  [Iraqi Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, ISIL media chief] would give me a text, like a script, and I would review it for mistakes, and then we would record. He would then review it and see if there was anything that he would like me to place emphasis on."
"The intention was to not make anyone into a celebrity. I was just the voice."
"I was exhausted. My ammo was gone. They [his eventual captors, the Kurdish militia] kept calling on me to surrender, and so I threw down my weapon."
Mohammed Khalifa, aka Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed

The Flames of War propaganda video was allegedly narrated by Mohammed Khalifa

"He is a symbol -- the voice coming out of ISIL, speaking to the English-speaking world, for the better part of the last four to five years."
"I thought [when first hearing an Islamic State video] this guy sounds like people I grew up with [in Toronto]."
Amarnath Amarasingam, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, University of Waterloo

Captured in Syria a month ago by a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led militia with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the man known as Mohammed Khalifa described his role as a rank-and-file member of the Ministry of Media representing the Islamic State's propaganda arm, responsible for publishing video footage to horrify a Western audience such as the beheading of James Foley and other journalists along with a British aid worker, and placing a Jordanian pilot in a cage, then setting him aflame.

Grinning throughout his interview with a journalist after his surrender following a violent clash between ISIL fighters and members of the SDF, he spoke of his background, as a child immigrating from Saudi Arabia to Toronto, later studying computer systems technology and working for a contracting firm, and finally the decision to leave for Syria after intently watching YouTube battlefield scenes that drew him to the Islamist groups associated with al-Qaeda.

"His voice is the most recognizable English-speaking voice to have ever appeared in Islamic State propaganda", Charlie Winter, senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London, stated categorically as though to emphasize just how influential he was in extolling the Islamist virtues of ISIL, cajoling susceptible Muslims in the West to join the fight against the kuffars.

Three audio-forensic experts were invited to compare the anonymous voice on the Flames of War video, the 55-minute long, professionally produced video in which this man's voice narrated a broad presentation of Islamic State's capture of a great swath of Iraq and Syria and in the process dispatched its enemies with a cruel zeal unmatched in modern times, with a more recent televised statement by Khalifa aired in Syria, post-capture. The voice experts were unanimous in their confirmation: It is "134 times more likely that the unknown speaker is Khalifa than someone else" two reported.

Forensic audio specialists, voice recognition expert, all concluded that "the speech tone, pitch, cadence and pronunciation is the same in these examples". Further official confirmation was delivered by a U.S. official identifying Khalifa as the ISIL video narrator. Equipped with a GoPro camera the 55-minute video was shot showed a trench being dug before a killing operation; it became an irresistible draw for recruiting from Australia, Britain and North America, stressed Mr. Winter.

Khalifa was involved in the production of dozens of audio and video clips in the production of the Islamic State's influential English-language propaganda and recruitment tools appealing to those eager to become part of the action. Although merely one among hundreds of Islamic State fighters from some 50 countries now securely locked away in prisons in northern Syria, this man played a pivotal role in recruitment and actively fighting for Islamic State. 

While the men are locked in jails, their wives in the thousands along with their children are held in detention camps, where they may move about freely but not leave. Among them would be Khalifa's caliphate wife and two children whose exact whereabouts are unknown. Canada, like most European nations has been undecided about retrieving their citizens, concerned that evidence of battlefield involvement may be difficult to obtain, making prosecution difficult. How like a democracy, unwilling to let actions, available evidence and reality speak for themselves.

Accordingly, not a whisper of a venture of commitment to reclaim this disgusting representative of humanity has been undertaken, no contact nor visit from Canadian authorities through consular aid and nor has the national police body, the RCMP commented on his detention. Toronto researcher Amarasingam recalled tuning his ears to the speaker's accent in an Islamic State video where the 2015 attacks in Paris were being acclaimed as a brilliant strike for the caliphate.

Muhammed Ali, a captured fighter for the Islamic State who helped identify the English-speaking narrator of some of the group’s films, at an office near the detention facility where he is being held by American-backed militia in northern Syria, Jan. 31, 2019. Ivor Prickett/The New York Times

During a research trip to Syria with Global News journalist Stewart Bell, Amarasingam, given access to a Canadian ISIL fighter captured and imprisoned, Muhammed Ali, further collaboration describing Khalifa under the nom de guerre Abu Ridwan was presented, describing him as a Canadian of African descent by way of Saudi Arabia. Born in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia to parents from Ethiopia his work life as an information technology specialist evidently left something to be desired for excitement and commitment.

He took to listening to online lectures by al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki which convinced him of the need to engage in jihad, but it wasn't until seeing a YouTube video where a group of British fighters speaking English on the Syrian front line gave him the impression that he would not be out of place in Syria, fighting alongside them. He left for Syria in 2013 at the birth of the caliphate,  joining the Muhajireen Ansar Brigade headed by a Georgian militant who later become the Islamic State minister of war.

The brigade he was with pledged allegiance to Islamic State soon afterward at a time when Khalifa claims to have begun working for the media ministry, a critical organ of the Islamic State as an influential recruitment tool. Under the media chief, Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, a close adviser to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, execution videos were to feature a diversity of killers to avoid any one participant becoming too prominent and rising to challenge the leadership.

Khalifa transferred from media voice to fighter when he claimed a Kalashnikov rifle in defence of the embattled Islamic State. The final gunfight he took part in, left him wounded and, he claimed, exhausted. And after six years of commitment and loyalty to the cause of the caliphate he surrendered. Leaving Canada, like its other democratic counterparts whose Muslim citizens had leaked across borders into Syria, to ponder what to do with this legion of human scum.

The English narrator, now identified as a Canadian, Mohammed Khalifa, speaks as Syrians dig what he describes as their graves in the video Flames of War. SITE