Monthly Archive: July 2007

Michael Colle's official Ontario Liberal Party biography has yet to be updated. The obvious problem is that it mentions that he was made the Minister of the Citizenship and Immigration, but has yet to mention that he was forced to resign in disgrace.

But besides that obvious correction, his list of accomplishments ought to be carefully vetted. It's more subtle, but evidence of the Grant-a-palooza scandal is there too.

Reviewing Garth Turner's Board of Director list for the Electoral District Association for Halton, I can't help but note two notable (former) Green Party members on the list.

Well, one is officially on the board. That one is former Green Party strategist Dan Baril who quit the Green Party under less than amicable terms.

The other is the Green Party candidate for Oakville in the 2004 election, Tania Orton. She is listed as requiring "follow up". Still trying to get her to formerly join Garth Turner's team, I guess. Does Orton think that running for the Green Party is less helpful than helping someone else run for the Liberal Party?

I wonder if that attitude is more widespread through the Green Party under Elizabeth May.

A strange story of dogs being used during a fight, and confrontation with police, and the demise of the two beasts.

Dalton McGuinty, premier of Ontario, has a headache with Citizenship and Immigration. The reckless distribution of millions of dollars of year-end grant money with little or no oversight has cost McGuinty a minister.

What if I told you about a ministry that does nothing but give out grants, and that had already been pegged by the auditor-general as having serious oversight problems, and that was being run by the same guy who had told us that there was nothing wrong at Citizenship and Immigration?

Let me introduce you to the Ministry of Research and Innovation.

A charitable organization with tight ties with the Ontario Liberal Party was a recipient of once of largest grants tagged as suspicious in the auditor-general's report.

Though the minister responsible, Michael Colle, has resigned, the aftermath needs to be dealt with. Already there are rumblings of tryng to recover the money.

And in that lies an opportunity.

Though Liberals reeling from the resignation of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Michael Colle are quick to point out that the auditor-general's report that cost Colle his job did not conclude that the cash the ministry was recklessly distributing amounted to a slush fund, I decided to look at the distribution of the disbursements.

I found that Liberal ridings overwhelmingly benefited from the grants, both in number of grants and in the total cash given out.

Though some skewing is expected, that itself suggests an interesing question.

When Stephane Dion addressed the Chinese Canadian Liberal Association, he spoke to the contributions of Chinese Canadians. He spoke in particular about Arthur Lee, whom he identified as Canada's first MP of Chinese descent. Lee was elected as a Liberal MP in 1974 in Pierre Trudeau's government.

The problem, of course, is that this was utterly wrong. Douglas Jung, a Chinese-Canadian, was elected in 1957 to sit as an MP in John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government.

None of this is difficult to find out.

Now the Sing Tao Daily, Canada's largest circulation Chinese language newspaper, has reported on this gaffe. The article ran in the Toronto and Vancouver editions. I've got an English translation of the article, approved by the author, and I've been given permission to reprint it in its entirety.

Even the bit about Jason Cherniak.

Lyn Cockburn, writing for the Edmonton Sun, argues that too much effort is being expended on demonizing China. She proves her point on China not being the source of all ills by bringing attention to a toy recall unrelated to China, and to international incidents that are unrelated to China. Having established that the press is suffering from tunnel vision, she wants more focus on Darfur and less on China.

Problem #1: The toy she discusses in detail is manufactured in China.

Problem #2: Those international incidents involved China.

Problem #3: China in primarily responsible for the lack of action in Darfur.

Problem #4: The editor at the Edmonton Sun seems to have gone missing.

I can infer the last one based on the sad lack of factual correctness in this column.

If history is any guide, Suzan Pawlak has nothing to worry about. The story of Jesse Davidson suggests that the Liberal Party has a lot of tolerance for people who allegedly steal from them -- as long as they're Liberals.

In the end, what really mattered was avoiding any embarrassment.

I have more direct quotes from the offer LPC(O) Financial Director David Pretlove made to the London riding association to replace the money allegedly stolen by Suzan Pawlak, his staffer.

It is interesting because he offers to cut a cheque from the LPC(O) to cover half of the amount alleged to have been stolen, and seems to be challenging the other amounts.

The cheques he was willing to cover were made out to Suzan Pawlak.

Except for one...that was a hotel bill. [Update: Turns out it was for a riding event at that hotel that might or might not have actually taken place.]

The message to the riding association? Take the $7,200 I'm offering and clean up the rest of the $15,000 mess, or else you'll miss your Elections Canada deadline, and we wouldn't want that to happen.

The National Post is reporting on the case of Suzan Pawlak, who allegedly stole $15,000 from the London riding association of the federal Liberal Party, and the attempt by David Pretlove, the financial director of the Ontario wing of the party, to hide what happened.

The bombshell? David Pretlove was going to use party funds to cover up the alleged crime.

A little gem from the video of Stephane Dion addressing the Chinese Canadian Liberal Assocation is how Stephane Dion struggled with the French translation of the name of the group, and listening to someone's comment on Dion's fumbling in French get picked up by the camera microphone.

Some observations on the story being reported that senior political staff are being asked to donate to the Conservative Party, and the bad feelings that have allegedly been expressed.

Once again, Steve Janke of Angry in the Great White North got the facts wrong.

Now read the post. Then come back. I have three observations to make:

1. Anyone can make a mistake in research. But it's fun to watch Liberals do it. They admit to being mistaken about the "fact" that was central to their argument, and then say "none of it matters".
2. If I was Stephane Dion, I'd ask Jason Cherniak to stop helping.
3. As for Jason's closing point on apologies, he just shows what a class act he is.

That's it.

Check out other posts from the Douglas Jung category
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In what can only be described as pathetic, all the leadership candidates met in Halifax to hold a fundraiser. Sixty guests shelled out $250 each to attend.

Total take: $5,400 after expenses, to be split between the seven leadership candidates.

That's $750 for Stephane Dion to pay down $850,000 in loans. Just another thousand fundraisers to go.

According to this Liberal blogger, Stephane Dion's gaffe at the Chinese Canadian Liberal Association dinner when he said that Liberal Arthur Lee was the first Chinese Canadian member of parliament, elected in 1974, is not really a mistake at all. The first MP was really Douglas Jung in 1957, but since Jung was a Conservative, and since Stephane Dion was speaking to a roomful of Liberals, it was understood that the only MPs that count are Liberal MPs.

Stephane Dion succeeds in ways few Canadian politicians ever can. All the Liberal Party leader had to do was say a few words to the Chinese Canadian Liberal Assocation about how great it is to be a Liberal. But he decides to give a history lesson -- and in doing so, besmirches the memory of a great Canadian.

Why would he do that?

Maybe because that great Canadian, Douglas Jung, was a Progressive Conservative.

And so Stephane Dion wipes him from history.

David Pretlove has been quoted (allegedly) as saying he was trying to help out Suzan Pawlak when he offered to pay back the London riding association of the federal Liberal Party the $15,000 that was missing from the bank accounts, on the condition that the police not be called.

If true, this means that he had reason to believe that she would be held responsible for the missing money. Pawlak was the riding treasurer until August 2006. At the time the money was found to be missing in January 2007, she had moved on and was working for Pretlove, the director of the federal Liberal Party's Ontario wing.

Was this a simple matter of restitution? I guess it depends on what constitutes true restitution.

The latest Health Canada warning is one of a long line of warnings targeting male potency products. Marketed as all-natural, Health Canada seems to repeatedly find that these products contain medically significant concentrations of sildenafil (Viagra), vardenafil (Levitra), and tadalafil (Cialis). These compounds are effective, but also require a prescription, since they all have serious side effects and interactions with other drugs.

Checking out a bit about this industry, I wonder if these health industry manufacturers routinely spike their male potency products in order to make they work. I say routinely, because I found a scientific paper on how to efficiently check for this problem, suggesting it is a widespread problem.

Of course, having had absolutely no reason whatsoever to have used any of these products at any time, I have had to depend on what I could find out on the internet.

With the recent spate of incidents in which police used non-lethal means against suspects and were roundly criticized, I wonder if there an unintended consequences to these new police tools. Are we increasing the frequency of violent confrontations by making those confrontations less lethal?

Health Canada has pulled a set of sleep aids off the market because they contain a habit-forming ingredient, clonazepam, that is not listed on the labelling. These products have not even been submitted for approval by Health Canada.

The Health Canada advisory does not mention the ties to China, though. So I'll describe them.

I've been using a new statistics and metrics package called reinvigorate. Here are my impressions, and what I've learned about site metrics using this package that can apply to anyone.

Falsely labelled Similac, a best-selling baby formula, is being sold in Canada, sent to liquidation outlets by an unauthorized distributor. This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Mohamad S. Mostafa made millions in the US selling bad baby formula. When he was caught, he ran north of the border only to be caught in Alberta by the Mounties. He is serving four years in a US prison.

I wonder how harshly Canadians caught doing this sort of thing will be treated?

Just checking on the formal definitions of obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact.

I've received, third-hand, an explanation by David Pretlove of why he was involved in the London riding association missing money problem. If we accept this at face value, his explanation includes confirmation that he was specifically help Suzan Pawlak out of a jam.

The Liberal Party is trying to play down the question of David Pretlove's apparent attempt to coverup a major theft of money from the London riding association.

The twisted story of missing money, criminal charges, and what looks like an attempted coverup in London, Ontario, continues to gain momentum. Questions concerning why David Pretlove, the director for the federal Liberal Party in Ontario, would have offered to reimburse a riding association that had been the victim of a serious loss of cash on the condition that the police not be involved continue to be asked, even as the media confirms that the person who was ultimately charged with the crime, Suzan Pawlak, was working directly for him.

In my post about the weird mess in London, Ontario, I pointed out that it looks like the director of the federal Liberal Party in Ontario, David Pretlove, tried to prevent an investigation into the apparent theft of $15,000 from the London federal riding association. What was disturbing was that Pretlove attempted to suppress the investigation that ultimately resulted in charges being laid against Suzan Pawlak, the former treasurer for the London riding association, and at the time Pretlove made his offer, one of Pretlove's employees.

Given that at the time no one knew who Pawlak was or that she would be facing charges, Pretlove's prescience looked very suspicious. The obvious question to ask is whether Pretlove actually knew Pawlak was involved when he made the offer, and if so, why try to suppress the investigation.

I'm not the only one wondering. The NDP has issued a press release calling on Stephane Dion to suspend both Pretlove and Pawlak until these questions are answered.

Not every consumer warning is legitimate. Especially ones that are forwarded by email. In this case, an old standard -- that major name brand lipsticks are going to kill you because of high lead levels -- is making the rounds again.

But in this environment of heightened sensitivity to hidden dangers in consumer goods, such as with the counterfeit Colgate toothpaste, these old hoaxes are getting a new lease on life.

A fascinating study on judicial biases in Canada confirms something that should be obvious. Conservatives will always favour the Individual over the State whenever there is room for doubt. And yet the academic who prepared the study thought this was crazy.

Web 2.0 meets the Blogging Tories with Stephen Taylor's newspaper viewer. I can't really explain just why the application is so darned addictive. Maybe it's that sense of walking through recent history, or the hunt for a notable day to recall how the major papers covered the story.

Read Stephen's post on the the creation of this application, then visit it yourself.

When $15,000 went missing from the federal Liberal Party riding association accounts for London, Ontario, David Pretlove of the Ontario wing of the federal party offered to cover the shortfall as long as the police were left out of the picture. The riding executive turned down the strange offer and called the police.

Today police have charged former riding association treasurer Suzan Pawlak with 42 counts related to fraud and forgery.

But here's the strange thing. Suzan Pawlak was working for David Pretlove when the riding association first discovered the financial irregularities. Coincidence?

David Chernushenko is resigning from his high-level position of Senior Deputy to the Leader in the Green Party, and from his position as Green Party nominee for the riding of Ottawa Centre.

This is a serious blow for the Green Party, as David Chernushenko was the Green Party's most successful candidate ever in a general election, and a member of the National Round Table on the Economy and the Environment, providing policy advice to the Conservative governmnent.

But then those are likely the reasons he left.

Since the murder of his wife, Shemina Hirji, in an alleged home invasion, Paul Cheema has changed from devastated husband to prime suspect.

Well, for some observers, he was always the prime suspect, given the strange details of the home invasion story that he told police, and that police now believe is a fabrication.

Still, reviewing the latest news reports, you can see just how dramatically circumstances have changed for Paul Cheema.

I've written a piece about the strange advertising of mystic Peer Syed Sahib I spotted in a Toronto-area Indian-language newspaper. The ad, or what little I could understand, seemed to promise miraculous results after a mere phone call, and a wad of cash.

Plenty of people have complained about Peer Syed Sahib's tactics -- constant phone calls asking for more money (large sums) and for family information. Moreover, I'm not sure that this sort of advertising is allowed in Canada.

But in poking around, I've noticed that at least two of the largest mystics seem to share a lot in common. Too much in common, I think. And suddenly the darker rumours that surround what these people do seem more credible.

Husband of Shemina Hirji, Paul Cheema, is reported to have been arrested attempting to catch a flight to London. The Cheema family is alleged to have tried to give him cover for his getaway.

Update: Police are confirming the arrest of the "primary suspect" in the murder of Shemina Hirji.

Update: The arrested man has been released but remains a "primary suspect".

I was cleaning outside, picking up the odd bits of trash that inevitably get blown around on garbage day, when I picked up a sheet from an Indian language newspaper. Unfortunately I can't tell you what newspaper it was -- the header on the inside pages lacked the name. It was only identified as the Toronto Issue, #714, covering the week starting June 20.

My eye caught a full-page ad for Peer Sayed Sahib. Virtually all the text was not in a Roman script. Besides the name and a phone number for Britain, the only English text was the phrase, misspelled, "100% GUARNTEED RESULT IN LESS THAN 1 WEEK", repeated over and over, forming the border of the advertisement.

I just had to figure out who this guy was and what he was selling, and I have to say it was quite interesting. It also begs the question of just how the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards covers this sort of thing.

Paul Cheema, the husband of murdered school principal Shemina Hirji, is not a suspect in the murder, insist police. He was attacked in the same home invasion that saw his wife murdered, but was not seriously harmed. Some suspect that there is something else going on here, and it has been revealed that Paul Cheema has a criminal past. Twelve years ago, he threatened his fiance with death and forcibly kidnapped her after the marriage was called off.

It's not something you see every day. The kids got all excited and told me to look up. You're right, I said, that is a weird looking airplane.

The distinctive shape of an E3 AWACS, flying relatively low, the radome clealy visible, tracking from west to east over Cambridge, Ontario. And directly over my house.

The Canadian Conservatve Ad Network is recruiting both potential advertisers and member blogs. Advertisers and bloggers can find out more information here, and advertisers can visit the BlogAds Hive Home of the network to review the growing list of member blogs and purchase advertising.

Looks like a disgruntled ex-Green Party worker, presumably Jayun McDowell (though this has not been confirmed), was responsible for the faked website at Adriane Carr's old domain. And Jim Harris has offered an apology to Liberal Hedy Fry for accusing her of being somehow responsible for the website.

In a followup to a post on AORTIC, the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer, I have received a letter in which a major Canadian medical journal has been asked to attend the conference and issue a special supplement covering the conference and the papers presented.

I've argued that this sort of aid to Africa, focusing on helping Africa become an integral part of the modern world, has more potential to solve Africa's social problems than the cycle of lending African countries money, watching the money frittered away but corrupt officials, and then forgiving the loans in order to start the cycle again.

A detailed look into the IP addresses and mailservers associated with adrianecarr.ca, the website that formerly hosted the website of former BC Green Party leader Adriane Carr, now the candidate for the federal Green Party in Vancouver Centre, suggests that the site is still firmly in the control of Webtide Internet Solutions, as it has been since its inception. That's significant in determining who would have changed the site to show a strong endorsement of Liberal Party incumbent Hedy Fry by her opponent Adriane Carr, an endorsement claimed to be fraudulent by the Green Party.

Another look at the adrianecarr.ca website, currently the subject of interest since it started to show a message from Vancouver Centre Green Party nominee Adriane Carr endorsing Liberal Party incumbent Hedy Fry, reveals it's long history, and the changes it has undergone, but more important, the changes that have not happened.

The Green Party candidate for Vancouver-Centre, Adriane Carr, is the target of an online joke in which the domain adrianecarr.ca offers a strong endorsement of Liberal Party incumbent Hedy Fry.

The Green Party is claiming that the Liberals are behind it.

An analysis of the website, though, points to one of Adriane Carr's supporters.

Though there has been a lot of doubts raised about what actually happened in Burnaby, British Columbia, concerning the murder of Shemina Hirji, the home invasion reported by husband Paul Cheema is still credible. The description of one of the invaders wearing a business suit is not as far-fetched as some people might think.

Police have executed a search warrant in order to gather evidence from the home of Shemina (Hirji) Cheema, murdered during an alleged home invasion. A search warrant will prevent the admissibility of the evidence from being challenged in court. What does that say about the direction this investigation is taking?

Another report on endemic Chinese fakery. This time, in China, upwards to 80% of barrels containing "pure" water for water coolers are actually filled with tap water. With the Beijing Olympics coming up fast, I wonder if national teams will be making a show of their athletes avoiding all things Chinese.

This is a fascinating story of an abused wife who had become a liability, a husband who arranged for her murder, the help he received from his family to commit the brutal deed, and the police work that uncovered the alleged plot. It links a Sikh family in Calgary and in India.

While the investigation into the murder of newlywed Shemina Cheema (formerly Shemina Hirji) continues under utter secrecy in Burnaby, British Columbia, the question of the possible role the mixed marriage into which she entered is being asked. The fact is, though, that mixed marriages between Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims is a particularly sore point for many in their respective communities, given the history of violence in India and Pakistan where these religions meet. It did not take me long to find a story of a violent reaction in a Western nation perpetrated by those who are bringing that violence from the old country. It happened in Birmingham, England, only three weeks ago, and thankfully only resulted in property damage.

But in a post in a Sikh forum, "dire consequences" were promised if mixed marriages were allowed to be conducted.

The investigation into the murder of newlywed Shemina Cheema (formerly Shemina Hirji) continues, but the police are keeping every detail under wraps. Even the cause of death will not be discussed with anyone, not even the family. Meanwhile, the question of whether Shemina was targeted continues to be asked, with focus on the mixed marriage (Paul Cheema was Sikh, and Shemina was a Muslim). A quick perusal of message boards reveals that the majority of families angrily oppose these mixed marriages, and the news director of Vancouver-based Radio India confirms that those feelings are as prevalent in British Columbia as they are in India.

Environmentalist groups seem to boost for the Liberal Party regardless of the poor Liberal record on the environment. Some people are starting to wonder exactly why that is. If they read my blog, they would know. But I don't mind explaining it again. It has nothing to do with the environment, of course. It has everything to do with money, and more accurately, going back to a time when money was dolled out with no strings attached.

The world is about to collapse. The environment is on the verge of complete and utterly irreversible destruction.

We are all going to die!

But there are still limits to what humans can be asked to do avoid this calamity.

Well, there are limits to how much Severn Suzuki is willing to do. The rest of us, of course, have to carry the load.

You would have hoped that with all the press on the issue of Chinese toothpaste spiked with diethylene glycol and counterfeit Colgate toothpaste teeming with bacteria normally associated with sewage, dollar stories would be much more careful concerning the health care products they put on their shelves.

I visited a dollar store (not the same one in which I found the counterfeit Colgate) and found a toothpaste, clearly not for the Canadian market, and clearly not allowed to be put on the store shelves and sold.

How do I know that this product was not fit to be sold? Trust me when I say it was so obvious.

A retrospective on the recalls of products that have happened in Canada makes a comment that speaks to the potential of blogging to tip stories and to change behaviour.

A newlywed, Shemia Hirji, was murdered during a home invasion in British Columnia. Her husband, Paul Cheema, escaped with minor injuries. Random tragic violence, it seems, according to the English language press. But the problem is that the East Indian media outlets are calling this a possible honour killing.

Test results continue to roll in. More species of bacteria are being found in the counterfeit Colgate toothpaste sold in Canada. And Health Canada says that the additional contamination poses a "serious health risk".

Irish rocker and professional holier-than-thou busybody Bono is demanding more, and more, and more Canadian aid money to be sent ot Africa, paid out our taxes (taxes he doesn't pay in tax-free Ireland).

Watching the responsible response by South African pineapple farmers to damage to their crops inclicted by bad Chinese fertilizer, it strikes me that Africa could really benefit from an attitude adjustment -- by us and not by them. And that includes Bono.

Though large swathes of Africa are suffering greatly from poverty, and much of that is a result of poor self-serving economic decisions by despotic tyrants, there seems to be other examples, like those East Cape pineapple farmers, where Africans act in the best Western traditions, it seems.

Maybe instead of shovelling money at the problem and then writing it off after seeing no benefit, Western governments ought to look for opportunites where Africa is excelling, and helping to enable and amplify that.

There is an opportunity with the African Organization Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) Conference taking place in Cape Town in October.

In South Africa, the pineapple crop has been devastated by the use of Chinese fertilizer laced with heavy metals.

Merchants in Vancouver's Chinatown have to wary of stocking goods from people who are not genuine licensed importers. What exactly is an importer who is not genuinely licensed? Isn't that the same thing as a smuggler? And smuggling large shipments of consumer goods and getting them past border officials sounds complicated -- like the sort of thing that organized crime organizations will take on.

Stephane Dion and the Liberals have issued a press release to tell the national press gallery and thus the rest of us that Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian National Authority, is visiting to speak to the leader of the Liberal Party.

Problem is, it simply isn't true.

Update: When I got wind of the screw up, I figured that it was the fault of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. It was their email, after all. But it wasn't their email after all, or more accurately, it was filtered through someone else. And I was really quite surprised to find out who it was.

A reader had a close encounter with an exploding battery at the workplace. The event was so violent that the Health and Safety Committee filed a report, complete with pictures. Though at the time no root cause for the event was identified, I think we can make a go at it, and what we see is consistent with what we've heard about the explosions of counterfeit batteries imported from China.

After making the local papers as an idiot extraordinaire, a Cambridge man considers what would have lead to serious bacterial contamination of counterfeit toothpaste. His conclusions are quite revolting.

The Chinese government has announced the results of an audit into corruption in a recently dismantled oral hygiene organization. These changes are not likely to do much to combat the counterfeiting problem.

Diplomats caught behaving badly in Canada are protected by diplomatic immunity. As a result, they sometimes get away with their crimes.

Good thing, too.

Now I take a look at battery counterfeiting. So what's the difference between a real Duracell battery and the Chinese fake? Duracell batteries are designed not to explode. The cheap knockoffs will definitely explode -- it's just a matter of time.

But despite that, milions of counterfeit batteries are knowingly let into Canada, since Canadian law does not consider the import of counterfeit goods an offense.